


we are golden

by tempestbreak



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Study Abroad, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bisexual Richie Tozier, Come Eating, Come as Lube, Drinking Games, Eventual Smut, Finger Sucking, Friends With Benefits, Friends to Lovers, Frottage, Gay Eddie Kaspbrak, Hand Jobs, Infidelity, M/M, Masturbation, Minor Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Minor Mike Hanlon/Stanley Uris, Mutual Pining, Nipple Play, Panic Attacks, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn, Sonia Kaspbrak's A+ Parenting, Wet Dream, well kinda? it's 2010
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-09
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-07 14:00:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 173,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21735430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tempestbreak/pseuds/tempestbreak
Summary: “I didn’t tell Myra I even applied to come here.”Richie looks at him sideways and stays quiet.“I told her I applied to the business program in London,” Eddie continues, “which was technically true. I just also applied here. I don’t really know why, I just… I had to, you know? It felt like… it was my last chance.”“Last chance for what?”“I don’t even know, that’s the fucked-up part. To do something, I guess. To doanything.” He turns to Richie. “Pretty stupid, right?”“No,” Richie murmurs. “I don’t think so.”---Or: Richie and Eddie meet while studying abroad in Jordan, featuring drinking games, bad dancing, things getting lost in translation, personalized playlists, leather jackets, photo shoots in ancient ruins, karaoke, and one (1) gay bar.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 563
Kudos: 395





	1. january i: is this the place that i've been dreaming of?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> these boys are living in my head and i can’t get them out. i thought i could survive just reading fanfiction or mayyybe i would write a oneshot about them if i came up with a good idea, but then this sprang into my head and i sighed and wailed and shook my fist at the sky and i demanded why?? WHY ME??
> 
> but turns out the dark lord has cursed me to write an arab world study abroad reddie AU so i wrote 42,000 words already and figured i should probably post it at some point. that’s life i guess.

_We are not what you think we are  
We are golden  
We are golden  
MIKA – We Are Golden_

Richie’s eyes open as the plane touches down. They feel crusty and dry, and he’s exhausted from nearly 24 hours of travel—from LAX to Atlanta to Paris to here—but he feels a rush nonetheless. He pulls his glasses out of the seat pocket, claps them on his face, flips open the window, and peers out. It’s brown and dusty out there. It looks hot, even though it’s January. It looks a little like parts of southern California, if he’s being honest, but he’s not home; he’s halfway around the world.

He’s here. He’s in Jordan.

As soon as the plane slows down and begins taxiing, Richie hears the clinking sound of dozens of seatbelts coming undone. An announcement is made in French that Richie assumes is reminding them to _remain in their seats with their seatbelts securely fastened until they have reached the gate_ but no one seems to care. Almost as one, the other passengers surge to their feet, already pulling down backpacks and suitcases even though _objects may have shifted during flight_. Surprised but not one to be left out, Richie unfastens his own seatbelt and twists in his seat to get a look at the rest of the plane, watching everyone with interest.

The aisle is already crowded, even though the plane is still rolling along. Next to Richie, a bearded man in a dark suit checks his Blackberry. Farther back, a young man in a white _dishdasha _and red keffiyeh hefts his duffel bag over his shoulder. Two young women wearing stylish _hijab_s and dramatic makeup chat animatedly to each other. An older woman in black clutches the hands of two yawning children.

He can tell almost everyone is speaking Arabic, but it sounds nothing like the Modern Standard he’s been learning in college. He thinks he picks up a couple phrases from the crash course he got in Jordanian dialect, but not much. Oh, well, that’s kind of the point of studying abroad, right?

Only a few people remain seated in the rows behind Richie. About halfway back, he sees a young woman his age with a short orange hair looking around with just as much interest as he is. Their eyes meet, and she quirks up an eyebrow at him, giving a smile. He grins back at her. He’s not sure what, but there’s something exciting about her. He hopes she’s here for AmmanAbroad, too.

Before he can look away, she winks and points a finger across the aisle. He manages to crane his neck around the other passengers and catch a glimpse of another fish out of water: a young guy, with dark eyebrows and brown hair in a neat side part, looking disdainfully at the standing passengers. He’s sitting firmly in his aisle seat, arms crossed over his red polo, even though the other two people in his row are standing, hunched under the overhead console, and clearly attempting to crowd him out. This guy is studiously ignoring them. Richie can’t stifle a laugh at this kid’s stubbornness.

Somehow—despite the noise of the other passengers’ chatter, the thud of bags being pulled to the ground, the hum of the plane’s engine—this guy seems to hear Richie’s laugh. Their eyes meet.

It’s weird, but Richie feels his heart leap. A blush creeps to his face. Okay, the guy is really fucking cute, even though he looks pissed as hell.

Richie smiles slightly and lifts his head in acknowledgment. In response, the guy raises his eyebrows and lifts one hand, gesturing about them as if in disbelief at the entire plane’s blatant disregard for airplane safety.

And Richie gets where he’s coming from. He does. He _could _just nod in commiseration and give the guy what he wants. But something about this guy’s face—maybe his incredulous expression, maybe his petulant, downturned mouth, maybe his dark, fiery eyes—makes Richie want to annoy him even more. Want to poke at him. Just to _see_.

So Richie does the most irritating thing he can think of under the circumstances. He raises a hand, holds out his thumb and pinky finger in the “hang ten” sign, and wiggles it. He even sticks out his tongue for good measure.

To Richie’s delight, the guy’s mouth drops open in incredulous horror. Richie laughs, and he distantly hears the redheaded girl behind him laugh, too.

Eventually, they pull into the gate and begin deplaning. Once he makes it to the aisle, Richie drags his too-heavy backpack down from the overhead bin. Before filing off, he chances one last look over his shoulder. The redheaded girl has put on some oversized, electric-blue headphones and is bopping along to her music, mouthing the words. The angry guy is finally standing, now that the plane is safely at the gate, and somehow his smug expression perfectly encapsulates the sentiment of _See? How hard was it to wait?_

As he is carried along with the flow of deplaning passengers, Richie hopes he hasn’t seen the last of either of them.

After stopping in the bathroom for a quick piss and to jam a yellow beanie over his staticky hair, Richie trots along with the crowd, following signs for Customs. He tries occasionally to read the Arabic lettering above the English, but usually can’t read it fast enough before he’s walked on past it. He does manage to interpret the Arabic for “duty-free” after seeing it a few times and gives himself a pat on the back for that.

At Customs, he pays for a visa with some of the Jordanian dinars his mom exchanged for him before he left and gets in line for passport control. After a few minutes in line, he notices that his good pal, Angry Guy, is in the next line over. Now that they’re near each other, he can tell that Angry Guy is shorter than him and somewhat slight, although Richie thinks he can see the faint outline of a tricep peeking out from under his polo sleeves. He’s chewing on his bottom lip, staring straight ahead with a slight frown. He looks shockingly put together for having traveled probably about as long as Richie has. Richie has an inexplicable urge to give him a noogie.

“Hey. Shaggy.”

Richie feels a light tug on his overshirt—which today has palm fronds on it because he thought it would be festive—and turns around. The redheaded girl from the plane is giving him a little wave around the French businessman who’s between them in line. Her bright blue headphones are hanging around her neck, music still faintly playing.

“‘Shaggy’?” Richie raises an eyebrow. “It wasn’t me.”

She laughs. “I meant more like from _Scooby-Doo_, since you’re tall and have that hair, but that works, too,” she says. “I’m Beverly. Call me Bev. You here for AmmanAbroad?”

“Richard, call me Richie.” He smiles. “And yes.”

“Nice, I was hoping you were,” she says, her eyes sparkling. “That ‘cowabunga’ you threw to Red Polo over there was hilarious.”

He grins, reaching out to shake her hand. “Only about three in ten people think I’m hilarious instead of incredibly annoying, so the pleasure is all mine, Bev.” They shuffle forward as the line moves. He turns back to her. “So, if I’m Shaggy, does that make you Daphne?”

“Multiple online quizzes would tell you I’m actually more of a Fred,” Bev says airily, “although I did once get Scrappy-Doo. It was my greatest shame.”

Richie laughs. “AmmanAbroad, huh? What about Angry Guy, do you know if he’s a fellow classmate?” he asks. “I suppose you know him as Red Polo.”

“Angry Red Polo Guy, yes,” Bev says, nodding. “No idea if he’s with us or not. I noticed him across the aisle when he pushed the flight attendant button to ask for hot water with lemon because apparently the air in the plane was too dry.”

“A total Velma.”

“Oh, _biiig_ Velma energy.”

Richie turns to look when Angry Guy gets called up to the next kiosk. He slides his passport across the desk, and Richie can just barely hear him greet the Jordanian customs agent in prim Modern Standard Arabic. What a dweeb.

Richie and Bev make some more small talk while they wait—“Where are you from?” (Richie: Southern California; Bev: Las Vegas but she goes to school in Seattle), “What’s your major?” (Richie: theater; Bev: fashion design and marketing), “What year are you in?” (both juniors)—before Richie gets called up. His customs agent is personable and welcoming; he seems pleasantly surprised by Richie’s attempt at Arabic, and Richie even gets a laugh out of him before he stamps his passport and waves him through to baggage claim.

“_Ahlan wa sahlan_,” the agent welcomes him cheerily with a wave. “Welcome to Jordan.”

“_Shukran_!” Richie thanks him.

As Richie emerges from passport control into the baggage claim area, a great crowd of people comes into view. Most are clearly family members waiting to greet returning siblings, parents, and spouses, but there are also several suited men holding signs with last names like LAURENT and HADDAD and MOREAU and BANI HASSAN. Richie strolls along, scanning the signs for his name.

At first, he doesn’t see the sign. Instead, he sees a red polo, a sensibly sized backpack, and neatly combed brown hair; Angry Guy, looking decidedly less angry at the moment, is talking to a slim man in a dark blue suit who’s holding a sign with a familiar logo on it.

Richie strides up and grins as he peeks his head around Angry Guy’s shoulder. “AmmanAbroad?” he asks, pointing to the sign the man is holding.

Angry Guy actually jumps in surprise. When Richie glances at him, he’s staring back at Richie, frowning slightly.

“Yes, you must be Richie!” The man with the sign smiles, holding out a hand. He looks about thirty, and he’s softly handsome, with dark brown eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses, gelled hair, and a scar across his chin. “I’m Saleh, the housing director for AmmanAbroad. Welcome to Jordan.”

“Saleh?” Richie repeats, trying it out. It’s a hard name for him to pronounce, with an emphatic S _and _an emphatic H, two non-English sounds. Richie sticks the tip of his tongue to the roof of his mouth, trying again: “Saleh. _Saleh_. Fuck—sorry, I meant, dang it—I suck at this.”

Saleh laughs. “No problem, it’s a hard one for Americans.”

“_Sa— _Oh, I think I got it— _Saa_— Nope, lemme try again— _SAA… SSA-LEHH_? Nope. No, that was even worse.” He laughs at himself; Saleh looks amused. “I’ll work on it.”

So far, Richie can see from quick glances out of the corner of his eye that Angry Guy has just been observing him in silence, his eyes narrowed and his brow slightly furrowed, like he thinks he knows Richie from somewhere but can’t quite place it.

Richie can no longer pretend to ignore him. He turns to look down at him, and their eyes meet for the second time. Angry Guy’s eyes are brown, but not the way Richie’s are brown, which Richie describes saucily to others as _dark chocolate_ but always made him think more of _mud_. No, this is a warm, golden brown, like a hazelnut, like a light-roast coffee, like dark caramel. Richie gulps, feeling that blush creep up his neck again, as those eyes continue to regard him searchingly. Richie realizes he might not recognize him from the plane, with his yellow beanie on.

“All right, now that I’ve made a complete fool of myself, what’s _your_ name, new friend?” he asks with a grin, extending a hand and trying to fight down the warmth in his ears. “And please don’t say, like, Cadwaladr or Quetzalcoatl or something, I’ve got enough on my plate already.”

After a second’s hesitation, Angry Guy, still lightly frowning, shakes Richie’s hand firmly. His hand is soft and warm. “Edward Kaspbrak,” he says crisply. “I go by Eddie.”

And, okay, Richie _wants_ to be cool in front of this guy. He _wants_ to take in stride the fact that this cute guy in a polo and fucking _khakis _(who the hell wears _khakis_ on a transatlantic flight?) just introduced himself using his full first and last name, like his mom probably taught him to, like Richie is someone he met at a networking event at _Hahh-vahd_, which is totally how he’d pronounce it. He _wants_ to be cool, he really fucking does, but…

“Edward Kaspbrak, you say?” he asks, unable to stop the grin from spreading across his face, and, oh no, is that his Hoity-Toity Country Club Voice beginning to creep in? “Of the Philadelphia Kaspbraks?”

Eddie frowns even more deeply at him. “No, I’m from, uh, Derry? It’s in Maine—”

Richie clasps his other hand over their joined hands and starts shaking them exuberantly. “Oh, the _Derry _Kaspbraks, oh, rah-_ther_!” and okay, it’s not his normal Country Club Douche Voice, it’s like full-blown Frasier Crane now, it’s some fucking Katharine-Hepburn-in_-High-Society _shit, but he can’t stop it spilling out of his mouth. “How droll, how _ever _so droll to run into you _here_, Edward, my good man. Richard Tozier. Don’t you remember me? From the yacht club?”

Eddie and Saleh are both silent, taken aback; Eddie’s arm is practically flapping as Richie shakes it up and down, but he seems so stunned by whatever the fuck Richie’s doing that he doesn’t even notice.

“What—? I don’t—”

“Do you know each other?” Saleh asks, tentatively positive.

“No, I— I have no— Derry doesn’t even _have _a yacht club—”

“Now, that’s not very sporting of you, Edward. Surely you must recognize me. We sailed around the cape together and afterwards took in a talkie at the _thee-ay-tah_. It was absolutely spiffing, old chap, although the rest of the audience refused to stay in their seats. A real safety hazard, wouldn’t you say, my good man?” And because Richie has lost control of the bit, really lost the fucking plot by this point, he has to fucking wink, too.

Everything—the Voice, the wink, the overlong, overenthusiastic handshake—they all hang there in space for a silent moment that stretches into infinity, knotting up in his intestines like a game of Snake, folding in on themselves in that infinitesimal silence, and suddenly it dawns on Richie that he’s already blown it with two new people, he’s failed, he’s too much, as always, he’s _wrong_, and—

And Eddie gasps, breaking the silence. His eyes widen in recognition. “You’re that weirdo from the plane!” he exclaims, pointing an accusatory finger. “The one who stuck his tongue out at me. _In front of strangers_.”

The knot of terror inside Richie untangles fast and clean, like a bow. Relieved laughter bursts out of him so suddenly that it takes even Richie by surprise. Spit flies. Eddie flinches back, finally jerking his hand out of Richie’s grasp. He wipes furiously at his face. “And now you’re the fucking weirdo who just spat in my fucking face. Thanks a lot, asshole.”

That makes Richie laugh even harder. What a fucking one-eighty from _Edward Kaspbrak _to _fuckity-fuck-fuck-you_. “Wow, that’s a mouth on you,” Richie says, delighted. “You should watch your fucking language, man.”

Eddie’s expression is getting progressively angrier. “And _you_ should watch your fucking bodily _fluids_, _man_! The fuck’s wrong with you? Why are you laughing so hard? It’s not fucking funny, dude, I could get the flu or TB or something. Stop laughing, it’s true, I saw it online!”

Richie has to bend over and rest his hands on his knees, he’s laughing so hard. He was afraid of the silence, afraid of being overwhelming, but actually, somehow, it’s this Eddie—Angry-Red-Polo-Caramel-Eyes _Eddie_—who won’t shut up now, and there’s something so rich and so comforting about how he fills that terrible silence with rage and cursing instead of jokes and Voices that Richie feels almost lightheaded. He doesn’t want it to end.

“You saw it online, huh?” Richie gasps, just to keep him going. “Is that where you got your medical degree, Dr. Kaspbrak?”

“You don’t have to be a doctor to know the bare fucking minimum about disease prevention! There’s nothing funny about TB, asshole, more than a million people die of it _every year. _I bet you didn’t even wash your hands after you got off the plane, did you? That’s like public health 101!”

“Hello!” Richie hears Saleh say. His tone says he’s eager to move past whatever the hell is going on with Richie and Eddie. “Are you Beverly?”

“Sure am! What’d I miss?”

Breathless, Richie manages to stop laughing long enough to stand up. Bev has finally arrived and is looking around at them with an inquisitive smile. There’s something about her bright, freckled face that makes Richie feel even warmer inside.

“Ah, Bevvie,” Richie sighs, “only the most romantic meet cute of all time.”

“Yeah,” Eddie bites out, rolling his eyes, “this goddamn walking disease here spat in my fucking face.”

“A real _When Harry Met Sally_ moment,” Richie says sincerely.

Bev’s smile widens as her eyes flicker back and forth between them. “Forget Velma,” she says, “I think I might have found my Scrappy-Doo twin.”

Richie laughs, and laughs even harder when Eddie demands, heated, “The _fuck_ is that supposed to mean??”

Saleh manages to usher them to the baggage claim, where the three of them locate their bags in good time, and then out into the dusty air of the Queen Alia Airport taxi pickup area. It’s actually cooler than it looks outside, with a slight breeze. Some baby palm trees squat in the median across the road amid scraggly brush. Richie points them out to Eddie and Bev and then gestures to the matching pattern on his shirt with a proud grin. Bev gives him a thumbs up; Eddie only rolls his eyes.

Saleh authoritatively approaches a man in a linen button-down who’s leaning against a green-and-yellow taxi and, after some quick bargaining in Jordanian Arabic that goes well over Richie’s head, the driver nods, pops the trunk, and skirts the taxi to get in behind the wheel.

Saleh turns back to Richie, Bev, and Eddie. “You can put your bags in the trunk there,” he says. “It’ll be about a forty-five-minute drive to the hotel, and then you’ll have a few hours to yourselves before we meet for dinner with the other two students, who are getting in this evening.”

“Ooh, mystery students. I hope they’re as cute as my good chum Edward Kaspbrak the Third, here,” Richie says, resting a hand on Eddie’s shoulder.

Eddie shrugs him off right away. “I hope they have some fucking manners.” Saleh briefly gives them both an uncertain look as Eddie drags his suitcases toward the taxi.

“Well,_ I _hope they don’t immediately come up with some weird schtick that only the two of them seem to think is funny,” Bev remarks lightly.

“Only one of them, actually,” Eddie shouts over his shoulder.

The three of them pile in to the backseat, which is covered in thick plastic. Somehow Richie ends up in the middle, even though Eddie and Bev are way smaller. He’s hunched forward, hugging his knobby knees, which are practically at his chin. Saleh gets in up front and starts giving the driver directions.

“Um, excuse me…” Eddie’s tone is surprisingly polite for the first time since he introduced himself, so Richie turns to look at him. Eddie has his seatbelt in his hand and seems to be trying to find the receptacle for it under Richie’s hip. “Could you please get your lanky ass out of my personal space so I could buckle my seatbelt and not _die_?”

“I’m doing my best, man,” Richie says, trying to twist even farther out of his way, “but there’s only so many places for it to go.”

“Any luck over there, guys?” Bev asks. Richie looks over his shoulder at her and sees she’s holding her unfastened seatbelt, too.

Richie reaches his hand down under his ass and tries to feel for the seatbelt things, whatever the fuck they’re called. No dice. “I think the plastic’s covering them,” he says.

Eddie’s head jerks up at that, his brown eyes wide. The seatbelt is still clutched tightly in his hand. “So we’re supposed to just ride in the backseat of a strange cab with _no seatbelts_?”

Richie manages to somehow fight down the laugh that wants to escape again at Eddie’s expression. He holds out his hands, gesturing broadly to the brave new world around them. “_Ahlan wa sahlan_, Eds,” he says expansively. Bev laughs.

Eddie’s expression turns angry in a split second. “That’s not my name,” he bites back, “and your pronunciation fucking sucks.”

It just makes Richie want to laugh even harder.

“Don’t worry, Eddie,” Bev says from his other side, barely stifling a laugh herself. “I’m sure this guy’s a safe driver.”

As if on cue, Saleh and the driver finish their discussion, and the taxi practically peels out, swerving immediately into the flow of airport traffic amid a chorus of honks. Eddie yelps and slides against Richie, still clutching the useless seatbelt.

The sensation of Eddie’s body against Richie’s is electric. He’s solid and warm up against Richie’s suddenly pounding chest, his soft brown hair brushing against Richie’s clenching jaw. One of Eddie’s hands flies to Richie’s thigh to brace himself, and Richie can feel his skin tingling under his grasp. He has a sudden urge to bury his face in Eddie’s brown hair, to snake an arm around him and pull him close, whisper in his ear something silly like _I’ll be your_ _seatbelt_, _don’t worry, I’ll keep you safe, you beautiful little nerd_—

But Saleh turns around at Eddie’s yelp. “Ah, yeah,” he says sympathetically, seeing Eddie smushed against Richie, “Jordanian driving can take some getting used to for American students. And some cabs you’re in might not have seatbelts in the backseat.”

“_Yeah, thanks for the heads up!_” Eddie pushes himself off Richie and grasps onto the handle above the window, holding on for dear life.

Richie and Bev give each other a look before bursting into laughter together.

***

They manage to get to the hotel without anyone dying, although Eddie’s grip on the handle doesn’t loosen much for the whole forty-five-minute drive. The driver turns on the radio when they’re on the highway, and Richie is shocked that he actually recognizes the singer as Umm Kulthum, an iconic Egyptian performer that they learned about in his Arabic class. It turns out Saleh is a big fan of hers and is delighted that Richie knows who she is, so they chat amiably about her until they pull up in front of the Geneva Hotel, a hulking, rectangular concrete building with square windows.

“This is a part of West Amman called as-Sweifieh,” Saleh announces as soon as they’re out of the cab, their bags on the sidewalk beside them.

“Sweifieh,” Richie tries out immediately. It’s the same emphatic S sound as Saleh’s name. “_Sssweifieh_—”

“Please don’t fucking start that again,” Eddie says, squirting some Purell on his hands and rubbing it in. “I just nearly died, I don’t need to listen to you butcher more Arabic. It’s easy. As-Sweifieh.”

“Oh, of course, perfect Mr. Edward Kaspbrak the Third gets it in one,” Richie says, “but us plebes need to practice. _Ssswei—_”

“Oh my _god_, you are so annoying. Are you seriously going to be like this the whole semester? And I’m not ‘the Third’, asshole, that’s such a stupid joke.”

“The AmmanAbroad offices are about a fifteen-minute walk from here,” Saleh continues, clearly deciding to try to ignore Richie and Eddie for the time being. He gestures for them to follow him through the sliding glass doors of the hotel. “So you won’t have to take a cab to get there during orientation. Dinner tonight is also walking distance; I’ll come back around seven to walk you there.”

“How long before we move in with our host families?” Bev asks as they follow Saleh to the front desk.

“Thursday,” Saleh replies. Today is Saturday, which Richie thinks seems like a long time for orientation—or, then again, maybe no time at all. “First you’ll learn about Amman and study abroad in general, and take your diagnostic tests, and so on, then you’ll move in. _Ahlan_,” he greets the woman behind the desk.

“_Ahlan fiik_,” she replies courteously, and Saleh gets them checked into their rooms and hands them their keys. Their room numbers are all different.

“Wow, our own rooms, huh? Swanky,” Richie comments as he takes his key. He’s not sure whether he’s disappointed or relieved to be in a different room from Eddie.

Saleh chuckles and shakes his head. “Enjoy it while you can,” he says. “Once the other students arrive, you and Eddie will have roommates.”

“So that means two more boys?” Bev asks, a little dismayed. “Damn, it’s gonna be a real sausage party here, isn’t it?”

“Actually, with the other two new students, and the two who stayed from last semester, you are the only female student this semester, Beverly,” Saleh says delicately, like he’s breaking bad news. “I hope that won’t be too difficult for you…”

(“Only seven students total?” Eddie mutters under his breath. “That’s pretty small.”

“And you would know about being small, wouldn’t you, Eds?”

“That’s not my _fucking_ name, asshole.”)

“Eh, whatever,” Bev says with a shrug. “Guess I’ll just get used to being one of the guys.”

Saleh looks a little uncertain. “Tomorrow you’ll meet Huda, our program manager,” he says after a beat. “She can be a good resource for you, if you get frustrated being the only female student.”

“Can _I _talk to Huda if I get frustrated being on the same study abroad trip as _him_?” Eddie asks, jerking a thumb at Richie.

“Oh, please, the lad doth protest too much,” Richie says, grinning. “You love me already, I can tell.”

“And what exactly is there to love? Your complete disregard for public health and safety? Your insistence on practicing every single Arabic word _out loud_? Your _physical inability_ to get my name right??”

“Wow, you were able to come up with three very lovable things about me right off the bat, Eds. You must be head over heels.”

“You are fucking impossible.”

“And a fourth! Amazing.”

Saleh shifts on his feet uncomfortably. “Obviously, if you want to lodge a complaint or request mediation, Huda would be the right person to—”

“That won’t be necessary,” Richie says, waving a hand, at the same time Eddie says, “When can I fucking start?”

Saleh looks back and forth between them uncertainly. “Well, I suppose tomorrow would be a good time to talk to Huda, if you want,” he finally says, checking his watch, “but I need to get going, to prepare some other materials for orientation tomorrow. Like I said, I’ll see you all at seven, _inshallah_.”

“Bye, Saleh, thanks,” Bev calls after him. Richie and Eddie also wave as he leaves through the sliding glass doors.

After he’s gone, Bev turns to them with a raised eyebrow. “You two can’t, like, chill out for even one second and not scare our program staff?”

“He started it!” Eddie says, at the same time as Richie says, “It’s not me, it’s him.”

“Oh my god, you have to stop or _I’m _going to complain about you,” she says, but she smiles a second later. She turns toward the elevators, pulling her bags behind her. “Come on, you losers, let’s find our rooms. I need to take a fucking nap.”

“I need a shower—” Richie mutters.

(“Yes, you do,” Eddie interjects.)

“—_and _a nap.”

“I need to let my mom know I got here safely,” Eddie says, pressing the _up _button to call the elevator. “What do you think the internet’s like here?”

“No clue, but please give your mom my best,” Richie says, yawning.

“My mom is already freaked out enough about me coming to the Arab world,” Eddie says, crossing his arms, “I’m not telling her I’m studying abroad with some tall-ass idiot who thinks spraying me with his bodily fluids is an appropriate greeting.”

Richie grins as they get in the elevator. “Your mom is already well aware of my greeting preferences, Eds, but I don’t usually spray her with _saliva_, if you know what I mean.”

Eddie scrunches his face up in disgust. He raises one flat hand up near his face, like he wants to karate chop Richie. “Are you seriously— _are you seriously_—” he grits it out, the hand shaking by his face “—referring to _spraying_ my _mother_ with… _what_? Your_ urine_??”

“Well, sometimes, she _is_ into that, but what I _meant_ was—”

“You’re fucking disgusting! What the hell is wrong with you? I should have demanded that program manager woman’s fucking _personal phone number_ from Saleh, I need to call her _right now_ and tell her there’s no _way_—”

Beverly startles both of them by abruptly reaching out and checking the room numbers on their keys: 622 and 624. She taps her own—626—against her palm. “What do you think, guys? Any chance these aren’t together? Because if your yelling prevents me from taking this nap, I am totally gonna lose my shit.”

“Don’t worry, Bev,” Eddie says over his shoulder, breezing through the opening elevator doors and striding down the hallway ahead of them, “once I’m inside my room I’m throwing up the fucking _chain lock_, and I’ll make sure to scream only into my pillow.”

“Like mother like son,” Richie calls. Eddie flips him off and disappears around a corner. Richie turns to Bev with a grin.

She raises an eyebrow at him. “You might wanna cool it, Shaggy,” she says with a smirk. “You’re coming on a little strong.”

Richie feels a blush creep up his neck. “Is it too trite to say, ‘It wasn’t me,’ again?”

She laughs.

“Am I that obvious?” he asks sheepishly.

She rubs his back comfortingly. “Probably not so much _obvious_. More _obnoxious_. It was like you wanted to push him down on the playground or something.”

“Ugh, you see right through me, Beverly,” he groans, pulling his beanie down to hide his red face. “I can’t help it. I see someone cute, and I just regress.”

“Well, I would be offended, but I’m a little relieved I’m not on the receiving end of kindergarten Richie’s idea of flirting.”

“Bevvie, _you_ are not cute. _You _are perfect,” Richie says meaningfully, pulling the beanie away from his face. “A literal angel here on Earth. One look at you and I knew you were so far out of the realm of possibility for me that you could only be, like, my sister.”

Her brow furrows slightly, like she’s surprised by the sincerity, and then she smiles widely, warmly. Her eyes are soft as she looks at Richie.

“So I really suck at Arabic,” she says after a beat, shifting her backpack on her shoulder. “I only started taking classes last semester, and I know, like, absolutely nothing. It’s embarrassing. So, I know we learned it, like I remember the lesson and everything, but I forget… How do you say ‘my brother’ and ‘my sister’ in Arabic, again?”

Richie sees Bev’s eyes sparkle, and he smiles slowly. “‘My sister’ is _ukhti_,” he says. “‘My brother’ is _akhi_.”

“Well, _akhi_,” she says, patting him on the back and nudging him down the corridor, “let’s get to our rooms so your _ukht _here can catch some motherfucking Z’s before she has to cut a bitch.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks so very much to my beta reader and soulmate @jajs, who didn't expect to still be humoring my weird obsessions by this point in our lives.
> 
> please PLEASE leave a comment to tell me how you liked it, because comments make carrying out lucifer’s dark bidding infinitely more bearable.
> 
> next time on "we are golden": richie is jetlagged! eddie is a fancy boy who speaks propah!  
\---  
words we learned today, class:  
_ahlan_: hello, hi [generic greeting]  
_ahlan fiik_: hello to you [response to "ahlan"]  
_ahlan wa sahlan_: welcome  
_akhi_: my brother  
_shukran_: thank you  
_ukhti_: my sister


	2. january ii: what’s a boy supposed to do when i can’t seem to leave you alone

Once he gets to his room, Richie does manage to get in a quick shower before absolutely passing out on one of the beds without even getting under the covers. Dreams don’t come. It’s like he’s dead.

Sometime later, he jerks up off the bed, his still-damp hair plastered to his face. It’s dark in the room, and someone is pounding at his door.

“Richie!” Through the hazy fog of interrupted sleep he recognizes Bev’s voice. “C’mon, it’s almost seven! We have to meet Saleh downstairs!”

“Uhh, I’ll see you down there!” he shouts back, his voice hoarse. He fumbles for his glasses, slides them on, and turns on the light, blinking owlishly.

He hears, muffled through the door, Eddie’s voice saying, “I _told_ you he’d be late, he seems like a guy who’s _always_ late,” before their footsteps fade away.

Richie sighs, scrubbing a hand over his face. It’s eerily quiet in the room. He had his iTunes on when he fell asleep, but his laptop must have run out of battery long ago. The silence sets Richie’s teeth on edge.

He finds his iPod and turns it on without earbuds attached so tinny sound leaks from it—_careless in our summer clothes / splashing around in the muck and the mire_—and starts trying to get ready as quickly as he can despite being stupid from sleep. If it’s almost seven, he slept for like _three hours_ and still feels like he could use another ten. His eyes are both crusty and watering. His head is full of cotton balls.

He clumsily pulls on a fresh T-shirt and a purple button-down. He carries the iPod with him to the bathroom and splashes water in his face, which doesn’t wake him up, and tries to do something with his hair, which he fell asleep on wet and is a lost cause. He jams his trusty beanie back on, checks mechanically that he has his wallet, and stumbles out of the room and into the elevator, where he nearly falls asleep standing up.

In the lobby, to his surprise, he finds only Bev and Eddie waiting for him, lounging in armchairs. They stand up as he trudges over.

“It’s about fucking time,” Eddie says, looking Richie up and down with a frown. “Saleh had to go on ahead because he felt bad leaving the other students to wait for him to get us. Now we have to catch another fucking _death cab_ by ourselves.”

“A death cab for the cutie,” Richie mumbles. He yawns and leans hard on Bev’s shoulder, eyelids drooping.

Bev chuckles. “C’mon, let’s get going,” she says. “I feel about as tired as you look. The sooner we have dinner, the sooner we can sleep.”

The three of them exit the hotel, Richie only half-listening to Eddie lecturing them about how they shouldn’t have taken naps during the day, it’s just going to make it harder for them to adjust to the time difference, and did they know sunlight helps with jetlag, before a taxi mercifully pulls up in front of the hotel. Eddie purposefully gets into the front seat and clicks his functional seatbelt triumphantly, while Bev and Richie pile in the back again.

“_Ahlan_,” Richie greets the driver, the way he heard Saleh do earlier.

“Hello,” says the driver in gruff English, looking at them in the rearview mirror. “Where you go?”

“**If you please**,” Eddie says in crisp, proper Modern Standard Arabic, “**we desire to travel to the restaurant Lebnani Snack in as-Sweifieh**.”

Richie catches the driver’s glance at Eddie and small quirk of his eyebrow before he nods and pulls away from the curb.

“You sound so fucking fancy, man,” Richie says sleepily once they’re under way, slouching up against the window with his arms crossed. “Don’t you know any dialect?”

Eddie twists in his seat to look back at Richie. “We only had MSA classes at my school,” he says, a little defensively. “It can’t really be all that different.”

“Yeah, dude, it can. You were basically like, ‘Prithee, good sir, wouldst thou deign to escort us to yonder eatery?’”

“I thought you sounded great, Eddie, way better than I could do,” Bev says.

Eddie ignores her. “How was I _supposed _to say it then, genius?”

“I dunno, but there’s like totally different verbs and shit for ‘want’ and ‘go’ and whatever.”

“Well, he understood me, didn’t he? We’re going to the fucking restaurant, aren’t we??”

“How the fuck would _we_ know that?”

“I’m sure we’ll be there any minute, guys, chill,” Bev says calmly. Her voice is tired, both _in general_ and _of their shit_.

Eddie turns back around after that, and Richie spends the trip watching street lights go by. The radio is inexplicably playing Akon.

Of course, they do make it to _the restaurant Lebnani Snack in as-Sweifieh_, as Eddie so primly requested. The neon sign is in both English and Arabic surrounding a circular, red-and-green logo of a tree. Saleh is standing nervously outside the restaurant when they pull up, but he looks relieved when he sees them arrive. He leans down by Eddie’s window with a smile.

“You made it,” he says. “How was your first taxi ride by yourselves?”

“Great, this time I had a seatbelt,” Eddie replies as he undoes it and opens his door.

“What do we owe him?” Bev leans forward over the center console.

“Three JD,” says the driver, his eyes in the rearview mirror.

Richie starts to dig into his wallet, but Saleh frowns and leans in Eddie’s open door. “_Tlat dinaneer, ‘an jad?_” Richie hears him ask, and he’s not sure what it means but he can tell Saleh’s tone is annoyed. The driver shrugs and responds in Arabic, and Saleh shoots back in even faster Jordanian dialect. Richie and Bev are frozen in the back, watching the altercation unfold.

Eventually, Saleh makes a frustrated noise and gives the driver two bills, stepping away from the door so Eddie can get out. Richie and Bev take their cue to get out, as well, and join Saleh on the curb. He lets out a deep breath, but doesn’t say anything. The quiet prickles at Richie’s spine.

“So, clearly we fucked up,” Richie says.

“No, you didn’t,” Saleh says quickly, holding out a placating hand. “I should have told you to make sure he turned on the meter. Especially since I knew you were going to be hailing it from in front of a hotel. I’m sorry.”

“I’m sure it wasn’t your fault, Saleh,” Richie says, patting him on the shoulder. “It was probably because we were riding with Little Lord Fauntleroy, here.” He jerks a thumb at Eddie, who flips him off.

“Nah, we were clearly rubes, and we got ripped off,” Bev says with a shrug. “Cabs are the same everywhere. Some good, some bad. C’mon, let’s get some fucking food. I am all about the basic human needs today.”

Saleh pulls a glass door open for them and holds it as they file in. Inside, Lebnani Snack appears to be a somewhat upscale fast-food restaurant: metal tables and chairs, off-white tile, pictures of the food on the walls. It’s mostly empty, although a lone middle-aged man is smoking in the corner, a red tray of wrappers and napkins before him. Music echoes thinly through the restaurant.

Two young men seated awkwardly at a central table look up, bleary-eyed yet alert, when Richie, Eddie, and Bev enter. One, with messy, sandy blond hair and an earnest face, lifts a hand and waves uncertainly until Bev peers around Richie, when he freezes, goggling. The other, with close-cropped black hair and an easy smile, slowly stands and reaches out to shake Richie’s hand as he approaches.

“Hey, I’m Mike,” he says, smiling. His hand is dry and callused and somehow makes Richie feel soft and safe simultaneously.

“Mike? I’m Richie. Pleasure.” He turns to the other guy. “And you are…?”

“Uh, Ben.” He stands abruptly, his chair scraping on the tile. “Nice to meet you, Richie,” he says, shaking Richie’s hand almost shyly. His eyes flicker over Richie’s shoulder and he runs a hand nervously through his hair, making it stand on end with residual airplane static.

“You, too, man.”

After a beat, Eddie crosses his arms, looking at Richie. “Oh, so you _are _capable of introducing yourself to someone normally.”

Mike and Ben look at Eddie quizzically, and Richie laughs. “You’ll have to excuse my associate, Edward Kaspbrak the Third,” he says, resting a hand on Eddie’s shoulder. “He’s recently retired from a life in the circus and isn’t used to meeting normies. Not sure if you could tell, but he was a fire-breather.”

Eddie brushes his hand off. “Okay, asshole, between the two of us, _who_ do you think is more likely to have been in the circus? The person wearing a polo shirt or the person who looks like a fucking clown school dropout?”

“If I dropped out, clearly I couldn’t have been in the circus, Eds.”

“That’s not my fucking name. Don’t make people think that’s my fucking name.”

“_My _name is Beverly.” Bev pushes between them and sticks a hand out with a smile. She shakes hands with Mike and then Ben, who turns pink to the tips of his ears and stammers that it’s nice to meet her. “It’s best if you stop these two before they get any momentum going,” she says, gesturing to Richie and Eddie. “They’re like a runaway truck going downhill.”

“That _is _how it feels, talking to him,” Eddie mutters.

“Aw, that’s so romantic, Eds. We’re a regular Thelma and Louise.”

Eddie sighs and forcefully grabs Ben’s hand, shaking it strongly up and down. “Edward Kaspbrak. I go by Eddie. Not ‘Edward Kaspbrak the Third’ or ‘Eds’ or ‘Thelma’ _or _‘Louise’. It’s a _pleasure_ to meet you.” His teeth are gritted.

Ben looks like he doesn’t know whether to be amused or scared. “Nice to meet you, too, Eddie.”

Once Mike and Eddie are formally introduced, too, Saleh gestures for them all to take their seats. Richie chivalrously pulls out Eddie’s chair for him, and Eddie pointedly chooses another one, across the table. Richie grins and sits in the one he pulled out, legs splayed, and drags a menu over.

He’s immediately overwhelmed. It’s in both Arabic and English, but the English isn’t all that helpful. What’s “manqousheh”? What’s “mutabbal”? What does “dough meat” mean? That cotton ball feeling in his head is back. He pushes the menu away, blinking.

“What’s good here, Saleh?” he asks. “_Ssalehh_?”

Eddie sighs loudly into his menu.

Saleh smiles. “Hey, that was pretty good,” he says. “Lots of stuff is good here. Let me know if you have any questions about any of the items.

“Um, I think all of it,” Ben says sheepishly. “I’m kind of new to Arabic, and I don’t know what most of this stuff is.”

“Heck yeah, me, too,” Bev says brightly. She holds a hand up. “High-five, fellow Arabic new kid.” Ben blushes and gives it to her.

“What are you going to get, Saleh?” Mike asks.

Saleh points to a line on Mike’s menu. “_Shawarma saj_. It’s grilled chicken in _saj_, which is a type of flat bread.”

“Works for me,” Richie says, relieved not to have to make a decision. His eyes feel dry. He rubs at them behind his glasses.

“Me, too,” Bev says immediately, followed by Ben and Mike. They all put their menus down on top of Richie’s and turn to Eddie, who is still perusing his grimly.

“Um, grilled chicken?” he asks slowly. Saleh nods. “Like, how grilled?”

Saleh frowns. “Uhh… it’s grilled on a, um, spike thing. With spices.”

“No, I mean, is it fully cooked through. Like, all the way. No pink.”

Richie grins. “Dr. Kaspbrak is concerned about the _E. coli_.”

“_E. coli _is not a fucking joke, dipshit.”

“I’m sure the chicken here is fine, Eddie,” Bev says. “It looks like a McDonald’s or something, they probably have specific settings for how hot and for how long they cook everything.”

“Yeah, and no one _ever_ gets food poisoning from McDonald’s,” Eddie mutters.

“I mean, they don’t?” says Ben after a beat. Eddie narrows his eyes at him, and Ben looks like he regrets speaking up. “Like for how many people eat there, I mean. Or at least you never hear about it.” He runs a hand through his staticky blond hair again, making it stick up everywhere, like a bale of hay.

“That’s because they hush it up,” Eddie insists.

Ben looks confused. “They hush it up?”

“Yeah, didn’t you know, Haystack?” Richie leans in conspiratorially towards Ben, who looks briefly surprised by the nickname. “The fast food mafia will order a hit on you if even _think_ about vomming after you eat a McMuffin.”

Ben, Bev, Mike, and Saleh laugh. Richie glances at Eddie with a grin, ready for him to get on his case for not taking the seedy underworld of food journalism seriously.

After a brief moment, though, Eddie’s shoulders relax from around his ears, and he actually huffs out a laugh. “Yeah, all right, that’s probably not true,” he admits, almost to himself. “You know what? I’ll have the same thing, too.” He gives a half-smile to the table and puts his menu on the pile with the others.

Bev catches Richie’s gaze with hers and raises an eyebrow. Richie blinks back at her, acknowledging her meaning.

That was something different for Dr. Kaspbrak.

Saleh puts in their food and drink orders for them, although he makes sure they know he’s only taking pity on them because they’re all jetlagged. Soon enough they’ll be fending for themselves in Arabic.

The _shawarma saj_ looks a little like a flat grilled chicken burrito cut into bite-sized pieces, and includes a side of fries with mayonnaise and pickled carrots and cucumbers. It’s _delicious_. Richie didn’t realize how ravenous he was until the plate was in front of him, but he’s quickly inhaling it.

“This is awesome, Saleh, thanks,” Mike says earnestly. The rest of them, including Eddie, nod emphatically.

“It’s hard to go wrong with grilled chicken in bread,” Saleh says modestly. “And you can get shawarma at lots of places in Amman, so now you know at least one thing you like.”

“That’s smart. A man with a plan,” Bev says appreciatively. “It’s almost like you know what you’re doing, showing American students around.”

Richie looks across the table at Eddie, who has scarfed down most of his sandwich already. “How are you enjoying your _E. coli_, doctor?”

Eddie doesn’t even look up. “About as much as I’m enjoying how stupid you look with mayonnaise all over your face.”

“Yeah?” Richie says, waggling his eyebrows and pointedly not wiping his face. “Does it remind you of something else?”

Eddie turns red. “Shut the fuck up, asshole!”

Richie only laughs.

“So how long have you two been friends?” Mike asks.

"We're not friends," says Eddie, just as Richie, around a mouthful of shawarma, answers: “Since the beginning of linear time."

Mike chuckles. “I feel like I know less now than I did before I asked.”

“All three of us only met today,” Bev explains. “We were on the same flight.”

Mike and Ben both blink and exchange a look. “Really?” asks Ben, looking back and forth between Richie and Eddie. “It seems like you’ve known each other forever.” Mike nods in agreement.

“It does feel like forever,” Richie says sweetly, putting a hand to his heart, just as Eddie rolls his eyes and groans, “It does feel like forever.”

Mike and Ben both laugh as Richie and Eddie’s heads immediately whip to face each other, Eddie glaring, Richie’s mouth falling open in excitement.

“Jinx!” Bev suddenly shouts, throwing a hand out across the table. “Jinx, jinx, _jinx_, motherfuckers, holy _shit_, a jinx on both your houses!”

“Can you technically jinx someone if you weren’t a part of the—?”

“Uh-uh, Richie, that’s gonna be two Cokes you owe me now,” Bev says, holding up a hand to stop him. “Although I guess that does count as me saying your name once. Dammit.”

Richie winks at her, mimes zipping his lips, and takes another bite of his shawarma. He glances over at Eddie, who looks like he wants to talk so badly that his mouth is twisted up like a Muppet’s. Richie chokes on his sandwich. Eddie shakes his head at him in disgust.

“So, now that we’ll finally get some peace and quiet, how about we have a normal-person conversation for once?” Bev says, turning to Ben and Mike. “What made you guys want to study abroad in Jordan? I’m here as part of a project I’m doing on international fashion trends. My major’s in fashion and marketing. What’re yours?”

Yet again, Ben flushes a little under Bev’s gaze. Richie wonders if he was that obvious when he first met Eddie, but he figures probably not. If he was, Eddie wouldn’t want much to do with him.

“Um, mine is architecture,” Ben mumbles, looking at his food.

“That’s awesome!” Bev exclaims.

Richie gives an agreeing, “_Mm_,” and nods. Bev shoots him a warning look, and he blinks innocently back at her.

She turns back to Ben. “What kind of architecture? Like modern or ancient or what? Keep in mind I know next to nothing about architecture, as if that dumb question didn’t give it away.” She laughs.

Ben laughs with her, encouraged. His face is profoundly gentle, Richie thinks, his blue-green eyes soft. “Um, usually modern, but last year I took a class on ancient architecture in the Middle East that I really liked. A lot of it was on ancient Egypt, but we also learned about mosque architecture and had a short unit on Petra, which was awesome. I took an Arabic 101 class last semester so I could come here and see it all myself.”

“We’re going to Petra on a field trip, right, Saleh?” Mike asks.

Saleh nods, swallowing his bite. “Yes, at the very end of the semester. It’s a two-day trip, and we stay at a camp in the desert the night before Petra, so we want to wait until it’s warmer.”

“Go out with a bang, I like it,” Bev says. “But I guess you’ll have to wait until then to have that dream fulfilled, huh, fellow new kid?”

“We’ll be going to other ancient architectural sites before then,” Saleh says kindly to Ben. “And tomorrow you’ll see the amphitheater and citadel in Amman.”

“Yeah, I’m excited to see those,” says Ben, enthusiasm truly creeping into his voice now. “Plus I’d really like to do some more traveling while I’m here, if I can.”

“You definitely can. Last semester students went to Israel, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria…”

“Oh, cool!” Ben’s eyes are truly lit up now; he looks like a different person. Animated, confident. Richie sees Bev smile. “I wasn’t sure if we were allowed to go to other countries. I’d love to go to Syria, see Damascus, Aleppo, Palmyra…”

“Mmm!” Richie hums loudly, his lips still tightly closed. “Mm, mmm!”

Bev cocks her head. “Huh, that’s weird. Does someone hear something?”

“_Mmm!_”

Saleh glances at him. “So he’s not allowed to talk until…”

“I say his name three times.” Bev gives Richie a Cheshire-cat grin and turns away. “Now then, Mike, I believe it’s your turn to tell us all about yourself…”

Richie groans into his hands. He’s happy conversation is moving along comfortably, but it’s hurting his head not to be able to speak.

He hears a snicker across the table from him and looks up. Eddie has a gigantic smirk on his face, arms crossed and one eyebrow raised haughtily, like he’s enjoying Richie’s pain immensely. He looks like the hottest jerk in the world. Richie wants to wipe that smile off his fucking face.

Richie grins back at Eddie before darting out a hand and stealing a handful of his fries. Eddie yelps immediately, and in an instant his hand is gripping Richie’s wrist, trying to pull the fries back. “Hey, asshole, those aren’t—”

“_Man_, I am really racking up the Cokes,” Bev says loudly.

Eddie’s mouth snaps shut, but his eyes don’t leave Richie’s, and he doesn’t stop trying to wrench Richie’s hand back. Richie leans his open mouth down toward the fries, biting at the air, trying to get close enough. But Eddie reaches his other hand out and grabs the fries themselves, crushing them into greasy potato pulp with a gloating noise in his throat—_if I can’t have them, no one can!_—so Richie snakes his neck forward and licks a wet stripe up Eddie’s salty, greasy fingers.

Eddie lets out a strangled noise and yanks both hands back to his chest, while Richie scoops up the crushed fries and shoves them in his mouth. Eddie gags at the sight.

“Honestly, it’s more of a disruption than them talking,” remarks Ben, sipping his juice.

“And you seriously only met today?” Mike laughs. Eddie glares at him; Richie gives him a peace sign and smiles toothily, fries in his mouth.

“Please, everyone, just ignore them, they’re only doing it for the attention.” Eddie lets out an indignant noise, so Bev amends: “Sorry, _Richie’s _only doing it for the attention.” Richie lets out a wordless, triumphant exclamation, and she groans. “Ah, fuck, only one more and he’s free. Michael, please, go on, we don’t have much time.” She puts her chin in her hands, her attention fully on Mike.

“I’m a double major, religion and history,” Mike says. “I’m doing my thesis on historical Muslim–Christian relations.”

Saleh raises his head suddenly. “Oh, that’s right, that was you,” he says, nodding. “I remember reading your application. There’s another student this semester who’s also interested in religion—Stan. We think you two might make good roommates, actually.”

“Oh, so you already decided who’s going to be roommates with who?” Ben asks.

Saleh shakes his head. “We just have some preliminary ideas based on people’s applications, interests… Nothing is set in stone quite yet,” he says. “We wanted to wait to meet people before making final decisions, in case any personalities were found to be, um, incompatible.” He pointedly does not look at Richie and Eddie, but everyone else does.

Richie puts a hand to his chest in mock outrage. “Mm, mm?” Eddie kicks him under the table, his arms crossed, and Richie kicks him back.

“Okay, Bev, I think you need to release them from this bondage,” Mike says, laughing. “They seem to be transitioning from verbal sparring to physical. Besides, I’d love to know everyone’s story for coming to Jordan for study abroad.”

Bev sighs and rolls her eyes. “Ugh, fine. Eddie, Eddie, Eddie.”

“Finally,” Eddie breathes, sitting up straight. “Thanks.”

Richie turns in his chair to face Bev, who is not looking at him. He stares at Bev, unblinking, for several stretching seconds. She takes a sip of her soda. Richie widens his eyes. They’re watering but he’s committed to the bit.

She opens her mouth. “So, Eddie, what brings _you_ to Jordan?”

_“MMMM!?”_

Eddie smirks at Richie’s frustration. “Nothing particularly interesting,” he says. “I’m an international business and management major, and we had to choose a foreign language as a requirement.”

Richie allows his head to fall back and lets out a loud snore. Mike stifles a laugh.

“I _said_ it wasn’t particularly interesting, dickwad. It’s not funny if I already said it.”

“You go to the same school as Bill Denbrough, right?” Saleh asks.

Richie lifts his head back up and sees Eddie nod. “Yeah, that’s right. We were in the same Arabic class. Is he back in Amman yet?”

“Actually, he never left. He might be around the AmmanAbroad offices tomorrow; he’s been coming in most days for the internet.”

“Oh, cool. I’m looking forward to seeing him.”

Without thinking, Richie kicks at Eddie’s shin, just hard enough to get him to look over. Once Eddie’s eyes are on him, he’s not sure what to do. He ends up lewdly sticking his tongue into his cheek a couple times.

Eddie grimaces at him. “You’re disgusting.”

Richie just shrugs, smiles, and looks away.

“Why Arabic, though?” Ben asks. “It’s an unusual language to choose. Why not, like, Spanish? Or Mandarin?”

Eddie shifts in his seat. “I dunno what made me choose Arabic,” he says, picking at a thumbnail. “Call it a whim, I guess. But I ended up liking it a lot. I like the grammar system. Like, how the roots work and everything.”

“I really like how the writing looks,” Bev says, her chin in her hand. “I got a nice calligraphy pen before I started the class, but I wasn’t prepared for how shitty my handwriting would look going right-to-left for the first time. I’ve been too embarrassed to use it.”

“If you’re interested in calligraphy, we can try to ask someone to come to the office and show you how Arabic calligraphy is done,” Saleh offers.

“That would be awesome,” says Bev. Ben and Richie nod, too.

Saleh pulls out a Blackberry and starts typing. “Great, I’ll let Huda know that’s something you’re interested in.”

“Well, I think that’s everyone,” says Mike. “At least, everyone who’s allowed to speak.” He glances at Richie. Richie sits up in his seat, turning eagerly to Bev.

“Oh, there’s no need to release this one from the jinx just yet,” Bev says, waving a hand. “I already know he’s a theater major.” Richie’s face falls dramatically, and he clutches at Bev’s sleeve, doing his best impression of Oliver Twist. She laughs. “As if you couldn’t tell.”

“That makes a lot of sense,” Ben chuckles. Richie tips an imaginary hat to him.

“Wait, you’re a theater major?” Eddie asks incredulously. He frowns at Richie. “Why the fuck is a theater major studying Arabic in Jordan?”

Richie smiles and mimes locking his lips and throwing away the key.

“I feel like there are lots of reasons a theater major would study abroad,” Ben muses. “Having new experiences, meeting new people…”

“What good is that supposed to be?”

“I don’t know. Isn’t that part of, like, ‘Method’ acting or whatever?”

“The fuck is that?”

“Learning a new language could help you with your voice,” Bev suggests. “Arabic has lots of different sounds. You learn how to move different parts of your mouth and throat.”

“How would that help you with acting?”

“Maybe he wants to be a voice actor.”

Eddie snorts. “Yeah, he’s got a face for fucking radio.”

Richie puts a hand to his chest indignantly. “Mm!?”

“He could be trying to find out what people here think is funny. Or sad, or romantic,” Mike says. “What things are culture-specific and what are universal.”

“There’s no way this idiot thought everything out enough for that.”

“Maybe he has hidden depths, Eddie,” Mike laughs. “Apparently you only just met him today, although I still find it hard to believe.”

“Hidden depths? Yeah fucking right. I’d have an easier time believing he just spun a globe and jabbed a finger at it and that was that.”

All of them look at Richie, who is slouched in his chair, arms crossed, smiling back.

“Well? Are any of these the reason you’re studying Arabic?” Bev asks. “You can just nod, or, like, point to the person who got it right.”

Richie only shrugs. He gestures to his closed mouth helplessly.

“Ugh, of course,” she says, rolling her eyes. “What do you think guys? Should I lift the curse?”

Ben and Mike nod. Bev raises an eyebrow at Eddie, who, after a second, sighs. “Yeah, fine,” he says. “I want to know what the fuck a theater major gets out of this.”

“Very well, then,” says Bev. She pretends to wave a wand at Richie. “I release you from the jinx… _Richard_.”

Richie lets out a dramatically big breath, as though he’s been holding it this whole time. He opens his mouth to speak, but before he gets a word out, Eddie holds up a hand to stop him.

“But before you start being all _Richie_ again,” he says, “please just answer our one question—seriously—and give us one good reason why the fuck a fucking theater major would be studying Arabic in Jordan.”

“Oh, I thought that would’ve been obvious, Eds. I’m out for the most coveted part there is in Hollywood, for the juiciest, most prestigious, most Oscar-baity of roles.” Richie grins at everyone around the table. “I want to be in the next _Dune _reboot.”

Laughing, he holds his arms over his head to protect himself from the barrage of balled-up napkins thrown his way.

Dinner ends shortly after. Saleh takes them to a nearby grocery store on the way back to the hotel so they can get any necessities. It turns out that Ben is actually a big fan of the _Dune_ books—which Richie mostly read because the 1984 movie was so fucking weird—so he and Richie chat about the series throughout the store, Eddie trailing behind them and asking incredulous questions whenever they touch on a particularly improbable plot point.

“Wait, he _turns_ _into_ _a giant worm_?”

“Well, he fully joins with it over the course of three thousand years…”

“Yeah, he’s like three thousand years old, Eds, he turns into a worm. Get off his worm-dick.”

“Pretty sure that’s not how that works. And don’t call me Eds.”

By the time they get back to the hotel, Richie is swaying on his feet, feeling punch-drunk and near dead, running only on fumes. It turns out he’s sharing with Mike, at least for orientation, and mercifully Mike doesn’t mind Richie listening to music while they get ready for bed, because there’s no way he can carry on any more conversation to fill the silence.

Teeth brushed, Richie crawls under the covers and drags a pillow over, crushing it to his chest. He turns off the music on his laptop and turns on his iPod, tucking an earbud into his upturned ear. In the other bed, Mike reaches out and turns off the light.

Richie expects to fall asleep right away, but in the dark, the Shins playing softly in his ear, he thinks back to dinner, to something Mike said. It turns in his head, over and over, keeping him from slumber.

Finally, he whispers, “Hey, Mike?”

Mike doesn’t answer for several seconds, but finally Richie hears a muffled, “Yeah?”

“What made you think Eddie and I had been friends for a long time?”

Mike pauses. “I don’t know,” he murmurs. His voice is just as tired as Richie’s; he sounds halfway in a dream already. “Something about the way you guys were with each other. It felt comfortable, and, um, easy. It fit. Like...”

Mike doesn’t continue the thought for long enough that Richie thinks he’s fallen back asleep mid-sentence. Richie shifts and is about to roll over, when he hears Mike’s gravelly voice again, sighing in sleep.

“Like… like holding hands.”

Richie feels warm all over. Mike’s words glow in his chest, lighting him up from the inside. When he eventually falls asleep—_and if you’d took to me like a / gull takes to the wind_—he dreams of holding a soft, warm hand in his, their fingers salty and sliding through.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song playing from richie’s ipod at the beginning is “hang me up to dry” by cold war kids, which to me is such a canonical young losers’ club song that i wanted to put it in here. the lyrics at the end are from “new slang” by the shins. oh and the chapter title is from "touches you" by MIKA; chapter one's was from "somewhere only we know" by keane, which was almost the title of this fic.
> 
> i'm not sure what the social cachet of _dune_ is these days, but the 1984 movie is still one of the most bizarre wonders of cinema ever and i feel like richie would enjoy it immensely.
> 
> did we learn any Arabic today, class? not really, i don’t think. When saleh gets mad at the cab driver he says, “three JD, seriously?” also manqousheh is a type of savory pastry with various ingredients, mutabbal is an eggplant dip (better than baba ghanoush, imo), and “dough meat” is a translation of lahmeh bi‘ajeen, ground meat on a savory pastry. Oh, and technically richie’s not right about how fancy eddie sounds speaking MSA. it’s more like if he was using extremely proper newscaster speech—enough to get noticed by a cab driver, but not like he’s speaking old english or something. nevertheless, this is how i always imagined it sounding and it’s way funnier to me to think of it that way.
> 
> thanks as always to @jajs, my beta reader and the kwisatz haderach.
> 
> next time: richie and eddie share headphones! richie gives eddie a new nickname!


	3. january iii: these streets will make you feel brand new

Their first day of orientation is not scheduled to start until 8:30 AM, but 6:00 sees Richie wide awake. Jetlag is a bitch.

The internet in the hotel kind of sucks. Only Google sites are available without paying a fee, so basically all Richie can do is check his Gmail. He has two unread emails: a short one from his mom asking him to let her know if he arrived safely and one from Huda, the program manager Saleh mentioned, sent the previous evening, which contains directions to the AmmanAbroad offices. He considers replying to his mom, but then he notices one of his Gchat contacts is online: Carla, his best friend from high school. He grins and flexes his fingers.

**richie: **hey heyyyy  
**carla:** omggg yo whats up??? how r u???  
i wasnt expecting to hear from u for like weeks  
kinda lame tbh tozier dont u have new friends yet?  
**richie: **im hurt  
here i am up at an ungodly hour, jetlagged af, and my bff attacks me for speaking to her?  
truly chivalry is dead  
**carla:** lol thats def not what chivalry is but ok  
srsly tho im happy to hear from u! whats it like there? any hotties??  
**richie:** im sorry what?  
i dont understand “hotties”  
**carla:** ok smarterchild  
**richie: **i simply do not judge other human beings on the basis of their looks, carla  
**carla:** ugh  
**richie: **so i would have no way of knowing who qualifies as a “hottie” or a “nottie”  
**carla:** or a naughty ;)  
**richie:** u horndog  
**carla:** sorry, ur right, i know my audience  
lemme translate into richie:  
i MEANT, anyone there who look like they will break ur heart?  
**richie:** ohhhh now i understand  
yes.  
**carla:** hahahahahahhahaha  
tell me  
and like tell me now if i should be worried about the status of our fwb sitch for when u get back so i can find some options myself  
**richie: **haha i think ur fine  
i give it like 90% likelihood hes straight  
…like 87% straight maybe  
**carla: **??  
odds have been worse before tbh  
**richie: **but odds have not had EYES THE COLOR OF WARM CARAMEL BEFORE, CARLA!!!  
**carla: **lol  
**richie: **odds have not IMMEDIATELY MADE ME LAUGH SO HARD I SPAT IN THEIR FACE AS SOON AS I MET THEM BEFORE, CARLA!!!  
**carla:** omg did that happen??  
u spat in a cute guys face??????  
**richie: **perhaps  
i can neither confirm nor deny  
but can confirm that said cute guy is a hypochondriac and definitely berated me for maybe giving him tb  
**carla:** lmao richie ur a mess as always  
i love it  
**richie: **i love u toooooooooooooooooo  
**carla:** actually i said i love *it* not u so  
**richie:** well u speak richie, i speak carla  
i know when ur saying u love me by now  
**carla:** die in a fire  
**richie:** ur very affectionate today bb  
**carla:** wait tho lets go back to the 87% straight part  
why 87%?  
**richie: **idk just a vibe i guess  
**carla:** an 87% straight vibe.  
**richie: **my vibes are very numerically precise  
**carla:** uh huh.  
**richie:** ummm lets see last night we went to dinner and we said the same thing at the same time and got jinxed by this girl bev  
who u would love btw  
**carla:** she hot?  
**richie: **yes but in like an ethereal way  
**carla:** omg stfu i hate u  
u are etheREALLY getting on my nerves tozier  
**richie:** <3 u love me  
**carla:** whatever**  
**plz just go on about mr. 87% straight  
**richie: **so we got jinxed and at one point i stole his fries and we fought over them and hes such a chaotic asshole that he like CRUSHED THEM IN HIS HAND SO I COULDNT HAVE THEM and i just  
**carla:** sploded  
**richie: **yes.  
and also licked his hand.  
**carla:** richie!!!!  
**richie:** BUT HE DIDNT SEEM THAT UPSET ABOUT IT  
**carla: **!!!  
**richie:** as in, he still spoke to me afterwards  
**carla:** …  
**richie:** maybe im lying to myself  
**carla:** i meannnn  
maybe do some more investigating i guess  
also i dunno about these things really but like  
is it ok for boys to like do stuff together over there?  
u always hear horror stories in the news and stuff about gays in the middle east  
**richie:** WELL those are mostly in the gulf or iran  
not so much in jordan but  
yeah it probably wouldnt be the best idea  
**carla:** i mean im not going to deny ur heart richie  
just be safe k?  
bc i guess i like fucking care if u live or die or whatever  
^ a sagittarius admitting love  
**richie:** i love u tooooooooooooo miss u kiss u the only bliss u have is when we r togetherrrrrr  
**carla:** ^ and a pisces admitting love lmao  
k i gotta go  
supposed to be going to a party that already started  
and i still haven’t even brushed my teeth with a bottle of jack  
if u see me online dont hesitate to chat me plz  
also plz post pics on fb of mr. 87% straight  
omg i know ask for his birth chart  
if he knows more than his sun sign he is 100% grade-A free-range QUEER  
i GAY-rantee  
kekekekeke  
also i want to know  
im betting sag or aries placements  
crushing the fries is some mad sag energy and i respect it  
oh and post pics of miss ethereal beauty for ya girl too  
ok seems like ur not there  
just do everything i said k?  
k  
peace out cubscout  
**richie:** ah fuck my roommate just woke up and i didn’t realize u were leaving???  
carlaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa  
fuck ok ilu ttyl <3  
  


Richie and Mike go down to breakfast together around 7:30 and find Ben and Bev already at a table. They exchange good mornings and then Richie and Mike step away to peruse the buffet spread, which is fancy in that it consists primarily of individual portions of foods that Richie has a hard time imagining eating for breakfast, like pasta salad or tomatoes and hummus. He picks up some muffins and an orange that he knows he won’t eat and pours himself some coffee before rejoining the table.

“So who else is mad jetlagged?” Bev asks. “I’ve been up since the call to prayer at, like, five.”

Richie raises his hand quickly. “I can’t remember the last time I saw the other side of seven AM.”

“Where’s Eddie? Still sleeping?” Mike asks.

Ben shakes his head. “No, he got up early to Skype with someone from home. I think his mom? He went down to the lobby, actually, so he wouldn’t disturb me.”

“Seems uncharacteristically considerate of Mr. Kaspbrak,” Richie remarks, breaking off just the top of his blueberry muffin. “My shins are bruised from how many times he kicked me under the table last night. Mikey here had to rub ointment on them this morning. It was deeply sensual.”

“Richie, I did that on _one_ condition,” Mike jokes. Ben laughs.

“Ah, shoot, my bad. The first rule of your roommate rubbing ointment on your legs is—”

“Wait, Eddie’s _Skyping_?” Bev interjects. “I thought you had to pay for everything except Google. I spent this morning emailing everyone I could think of just to pass the time.”

Ben shrugs, stabbing his pasta salad with a fork. “I dunno. Maybe he made the Skype plans before he knew the hotel internet policy.”

“Speaking of which, did everyone else get Huda’s email?” Mike asks. “Any chance we could print out the map, do you think?”

“No need.” Bev puts a hand on Ben’s shoulder with a smile. “Ben was an adult and planned ahead for all of us.”

Ben flushes pleasantly and pulls a folded-up piece of paper from his jeans pocket. “I’m pretty sure I know where we’re going, but just in case.”

“And it probably _is_ about time for us to skedaddle, huh?” Richie says. “If we’re walking.”

Bev checks her watch. It has a thin dyed leather band, and she wears the face on the inside of her wrist, against her pulse. “It’s past eight already. Think we should we wait for Eddie?”

“Speaking of,” Richie says, leaning back in his chair, “there’s the considerate shin-kicker now.” He waves as Eddie power-walks over to them, his mouth set in a thin line and his black laptop tucked under his arm. “Morning, sunshine. Did your mom ask about me?”

Eddie scowls at him. “So you’re just always fucking like this, huh? It wasn’t some weird effect of a full day of traveling?”

“Wow, our first F-bomb of the day already,” Richie whistles, smiling. “What’s the time of impact, Bev?”

She smirks and turns her wrist over once more. “Eight-oh-seven.”

Eddie’s face pales. “Shit, it’s already that late? I still need to get ready. Are you guys leaving, like, right now?”

“We were going to, but I can wait for you if you want, Eddie,” Ben says kindly, before Richie can even think to offer.

Eddie looks briefly like he wants to refuse but then nods quickly. “Okay, yeah, that’d be great. I’ll be down in, like, ten minutes.” And he scurries off toward the elevators.

Once Eddie is gone, Ben slides the folded map across the table to Bev. “Here, you guys take it. I remember how to get there.”

“Are you sure?”

Ben nods resolutely. “I’m good with that sort of thing.”

Richie sighs. “Haystack, the tragic hero, sacrificing himself for the group. ‘Go on without me,’ he cries. ‘I’m actually good with directions.’”

Ben stands, laughing. “I’ll go hurry Eddie along. See you guys there.”

The morning is overcast and chilly. As they leave the hotel, Richie is startled by the cold wind that bites him. He shoves his hands in his pockets, grateful that he at least threw on a hoodie. Fortunately, the three of them move quickly enough to keep warm.

The gray sidewalk waxes and wanes, in some places so wide that cars are parked on it, in others narrow enough that they have to walk single-file. Richie nearly trips when the sidewalk ends unexpectedly, but Mike catches his arm and pats him on the shoulder as he rights himself. They stride past a mechanic, a bakery that catches Bev’s eye, countless mobile phone stores, and a shuttered liquor store advertising Heineken.

Eventually they reach what is labeled on the map as Seventh Circle, a massive traffic exchange that cars enter and exit in a whirling, inscrutable dance. They pause on the edge of one island, watching. It feels like they’re trying to hop a train, the timing essential. Across the circle, they see a woman step off the sidewalk fearlessly, unconcerned as cars swerve to avoid her. They watch in silent awe as she effortlessly crosses the circle.

“I feel like the rabbits in that rabbit movie,” Bev mutters. “Trying to figure out what a road is and how to cross it.”

“_Watership Down_,” says Mike.

“Yes. Fucked up movie.”

“Yep.”

“Well, we gotta cross some time,” Richie says. “C’mon, they can’t hit all of us.”

Mike laughs. “And what exactly is stopping them?” But the three of them dart across the islands of the traffic circle, somehow unscathed, to stop breathless on the other side of the street.

The rest of the walk is uneventful, down sidewalks and up sidestreets, climbing a hill to the road labeled Paris Street on their map. Finally, Bev turns them down a brick-paved alley, dipping downward, into the lobby of a tall building. On the third floor, the elevator opens into an office lobby, the AmmanAbroad logo on the wall behind the desk. The receptionist offers them the use of a coat closet and then leads them down a laminate hallway to a classroom.

As soon as they enter, a woman who looks to be in her mid-thirties stands and smiles genuinely at them. She’s tall, broad, and kind-looking, her brown hair twisted into a bun. She has a mole above her left upper lip.

“You made it,” she says, delighted, walking forward with her hand extended. “Well, some of you did. I assume the others are just behind you? I’m Huda Zureiqat. Welcome to AmmanAbroad.”

Bev shakes her hand first. “Beverly. Ben and Eddie are on their way.”

“Wonderful. Nice to meet you, Bev.”

Richie takes her hand next. “I’m Richie. And he actually prefers Eds.”

“What?”

“Edward Kaspbrak. He likes the name Eds.”

Huda gives him a shrewd look. “Richie,” she says with a note of recognition, one side of her mouth quirking up. “Saleh told me you and Eddie like to annoy each other.”

Richie laughs, running a hand through his hair. “That’s one way to put it. I do think ‘Eds’ is catching on, though.”

Bev snorts. “Stop trying to make ‘Eds’ happen. It’s not going to happen.”

He clasps a hand over his heart. “Quoting _Mean Girls_? _Ukhti_, you are truly perfection.”

Huda shakes hands with Mike, too, and gestures for them to take their seats at one of the large trapezoidal tables. There are five places set with blue folders of orientation materials. Huda leans against the desk at the front of the room. “So, how was your first night in the hotel? Did you sleep okay?”

“When I _was_ sleeping, I slept well,” Bev says drily.

Huda gives her a sympathetic smile. “Jetlag. When did you all wake up?”

Bev holds up five fingers, Richie six, and Mike, the lucky duck, seven.

Huda laughs. “Well, you can help yourselves to coffee or tea in the lounge. We have Nescafe…” The sound of footsteps coming down the hall cuts her off, and she stands up straight. In another second, Eddie and Ben appear breathlessly in the doorway. Eddie’s brown hair is tousled for once, his face lightly flushed from the cold. Richie feels his neck get hot under his shirt collar.

“Oh good, I’m so glad you made it,” Huda says warmly. “I’m Huda Zureiqat, your program manager.”

“Edward Kaspbrak,” Eddie breathes, stepping forward to take her hand. “I go by Eddie.”

Huda smiles. “So, not Eds.”

Eddie whips his head to glare at Richie, who holds up his hands defensively. “You are the fucking worst.” Huda raises her eyebrows in surprise, and he quickly says, “Sorry. I meant. He’s the worst. Nice to meet you, Huda.” He shakes her hand firmly once more and takes a seat at the other table.

Richie leans over the gap between them. “You might want to work on that potty mouth of yours,” he stage-whispers behind his hand.

“Yeah, well, _you_ might want to work on your— your fucking— whole— _everything_,” Eddie retorts lamely, flipping open his folder.

“Good one.”

“Shut the fuck up, asshole. I’ve been up since four-fucking-thirty, okay?”

Richie grimaces. “Jesus Christ. Just to Skype with your mom?”

Eddie opens his mouth to reply, but Huda takes her seat again at the front of the room and clears her throat. Richie and Eddie both turn their attention to the front.

The morning is taken up with general orientation activities. Huda provides an overview of AmmanAbroad and the structure of the program. They’ll be taking classes in both MSA and colloquial Arabic, which Huda calls _‘ammiya_ (Richie repeats it under his breath, and Eddie flicks an orange peel at him), as well as content courses taught in English. Richie tries not to drift off; Bev is doodling next to him.

After they get through the detailed logistical stuff, they move onto the cheesy ice-breakers. Huda passes out some sheets for “Human Bingo”, which is supposed to help them get to know the office staff. They split into teams and go around the office, finding people who were born in Amman, or who read three books in the past year. Eddie and Ben’s team wins, and Richie can’t stop laughing at Eddie’s visible disappointment when he realizes there is no prize.

By then it’s nearly noon, and Huda tells them that they’ll leave for the city tour shortly. Richie shrugs his hoodie back on and pushes his way into the study abroad lounge. It’s a space just for their use between classes, containing some blue couches and armchairs, two old desktop computers, and Saleh’s desk in one corner. Richie sucks down his third bitter cup of instant coffee standing by the hot water dispenser, the roof of his mouth already scalded and scarred.

Bev peeks her head in and shakes a white box at him. “Any chance you smoke, Tozier?” she asks. “You seem like a man with some vices.”

Richie laughs, his hand shaking and jittery around his mug. “What gave me away?”

They descend the elevator together and step out into the brick alley in front of the office. It’s only slightly warmer than it was that morning, and the cold air still cuts right through Richie’s light hoodie. He shudders. Bev looks nonchalant in her denim jacket as she lights his cigarette for him.

“What’d you think of Human Bingo?” he asks.

“Some bullshit,” she laughs, taking a long drag. “I don’t give a fuck who read three books last year. Tell me who I can bum a cigarette off of, Huda.”

Richie smiles. “I kept thinking what _our_ bingo squares would be.”

Bev flicks off the ash. “‘Hot mess’,” she says.

“For you or me?”

“Either. Both.”

“What about everyone else’s?”

Bev blows out a long stream of smoke, her brow furrowed. “Mike would be ‘most likely to pull you from a burning building’,” she says. “Ben would be ‘most likely to have designed the building with fire safety in mind’.”

“Eddie would be ‘most likely to set the building on fire with you in it’.”

Bev chuckles. “Specifically for you, maybe.”

Richie quietly sucks in another drag. “You don’t think he actually dislikes me, though, right? It’s just a joke.”

She waves a hand dismissively. “Don’t ask stupid questions. He doesn’t need to pay you half the attention he does. I don’t.”

Richie huffs out a laugh, goosebumps prickling his skin in the cold air. “You’re really shooting from the hip today, _ukhti_.”

“All bullshit ice-breaker activities and no sleep make Bevvie a mean girl,” she says. “Or something.”

Ben and Mike join them a few minutes later, along with Huda and Saleh. Richie enviously observes their jackets. His fingertips are already ice cold and he’s started shivering, although that may be partly the caffeine and nicotine.

“Eddie will be down in a minute,” says Huda, “and then we’ll head out.”

“Um, _‘afwan_, H-Huda,” Richie says, teeth chattering, “but I was led to believe that the Middle East would be _warm_.”

She tilts her head sympathetically. “Most of the year it is, but the winters can get pretty cold. Sometimes it can even snow.”

Richie folds his arms across his chest and shoves his hands into his armpits. “Well, isn’t that m-ma-magical.”

“Didn’t you pack a jacket, Tozier?” Mike asks, clapping Richie on the shoulder. “It was on the list.”

“I thought that was just a t-tip for a-ha-accessorizing, M-Mikey,” Richie tries to joke, but his shivering really botches the punchline. He bundles himself up close to Mike, who is warm as hell in a puffy, light blue coat. Mike laughs kindly and starts rubbing Richie’s arms up and down to warm him up.

“Guess you’ll just have to get one while you’re here, _akhi_,” Bev says. “Let’s go together. I’m dying to shop already. Got any good secondhand stores around here, Huda?”

“Not around here, but there _is_ a great secondhand market in East Amman every Friday. You could definitely get a jacket there, Richie.”

Bev’s eyes practically have stars in them. “Oh my _God_, Richie, we have to go.”

“Just name the date, _ukhti_. I gotta get myself a GD jacket. What’s ‘jacket’ in _‘ammiya_, Huda?”

“_Jakeit_.”

“Fuck yeah.”

Over Mike’s shoulder, Richie sees Eddie step out of the glass doors of the office building. He’s wearing the biggest, puffiest white coat Richie has ever seen. Coupled with his khaki pants, he looks like a cotton ball with legs.

“And then we got the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man over here,” Richie announces, stepping out of Mike’s warmth and walking over to meet Eddie. His eyes rake over him as a smile spreads across his face, the cold temporarily forgotten. “You look like the Abominable S-Snowman, dude. Eddie the Yuh-Yeti.”

Eddie gives him a death glare. “That would be a lot funnier if your teeth weren’t chattering, asshole,” he says. “I’m not going to warm you up if you start dying of hypothermia. I _will _go on without you.”

“Don’t worry. If I get too cold, I’ll just c-cut you open and climb inside you, Eds. Like Luke and the t-t-tauntaun.”

Eddie jerks his head back. “What the fuck kinda thing is that to say? I just fucking met you. Jesus Christ.”

Richie bursts into laughter.

“Hey, everyone, how about a picture before we go?” Huda calls. “Anyone have a camera?”

“Me, me, me!” Richie slides his thin digital camera out of his back pocket and jogs over to her. He drapes an arm each around Mike and Bev, and after a moment, Ben and Eddie bookend them. Huda counts down and snaps a photo of the five of them, the first of the trip. Richie eagerly pulls it up afterwards, Bev peeking over his shoulder. They look chilly and ragged from jetlag but optimistic, somehow. Like they’re ready to become friends.

“Aw, we’re adorable,” she coos. “Five idiots abroad.”

The five of them, Huda, and Saleh pile into a rented minivan, Richie clambering all the way into the back with Bev close behind him.

Their first stop is a popular street off First Circle—much of Amman is arranged around eight traffic circles, linked by one central road, Huda explains—called Rainbow Street.

“Sounds like my kinda street,” Richie pipes up.

“Students last semester spent a lot of time there. There are lots of restaurants and internet cafes. There’s a bar that has a very good happy hour. And it also has the best falafel in the city, in my opinion.”

“Finally, we’re learning the important shit,” Bev grumbles.

On Rainbow Street, their minivan bumps slowly along the cobbled one-way road until Huda directs the driver to pull over. They spill out into daylight; the sun has finally emerged, and Richie’s not nearly as cold, now. Huda shows them to Al-Quds Falafel, a squat cube of a shop that’s little more than two men behind a counter, a hot press for sandwiches, and a bubbling bath of frying oil, green falafel bobbing like apples. The sandwiches are nearly a foot long—falafel, hummus, and thin strips of vinegary pickles, all hot and fresh, pressed flat and crispy in their sesame-studded bread—for 30 piastres, which Ben exclaims is _only like 35 cents!_

Richie burns his mouth for the fourth time that day. It’s worth it.

Huda ushers them down the cobbled street to a lookout point, where they can see downtown Amman, the old city, spread out before them, thousands of sandy stone buildings built onto rippling hills and shady canyons, as far as the eye can see. Bev, revived like a flower by the food and sunlight, asks Huda to take another picture on Richie’s camera, which Bev has commandeered, and Huda snaps the shutter as Eddie is berating Richie for snaking an arm around his neck and raining sesame seeds in his hair.

Their second stop is down there, in the shadow of the hills. The Roman amphitheater rises before them, hard white curves and seating for six thousand on steep stone steps with a dusting of evergreen trees at the top, where the green of the hillside peeks out. It was never finished; a third of the steps do not extend to the top but end, interrupted, in sky.

At the base of the theater, Huda explains how its design allows sound to travel. Ben listens to her raptly, nodding. The curvature of the stone around the stage, she says, is such that a person can stand at one end of the semicircle and speak to a person at the other end, across the full width of the stage, and it sounds like they’re whispering in their ear. Richie immediately runs to one side, shouting and waving for Eddie to go to the other, so they can speak through the stone. And Eddie sighs, but he does it.

Richie bends his ear, watching Eddie kneel on his end, and he murmurs into the rock: “Can you really hear me?”

He sees Eddie start, as though he didn’t believe it. Richie sees his mouth move but can’t hear him until the voice curves back. “Holy shit, I can. This is wild.”

Richie laughs, delighted. “Wow, you sound like you’re right next to me!”

“I know.”

“Tell me a secret, Eds.”

“Fuck no.”

“I’ll tell _you_ a secret.”

“Okay. Then fucking do it. The stone is hurting my knees.”

He snorts. “My secret is…” He pauses, thinking. Then he purrs, “You look cute in that white coat, Yeti.”

“Shut the fuck up.” Eddie’s voice comes back sharp. “_My_ secret is I fucking _hate_ that nickname. It’s worse than Eds.”

Richie laughs and stands. He gives Huda and the rest a thumbs up. “Can confirm,” he calls. “Heard a Yeti tell me to shut the fuck up through the stones.”

But the stone around the stage is not the only acoustical magic of the amphitheater. Huda tells them that the cavea is so steep that even audience members in the very highest, most precarious seats can hear any actor who stands on the marked stone at the stage’s center. They have to try it.

Bev leads them, Richie close behind, as they scale the terraced rock in the very middle, where it’s steepest. When Richie’s heart starts pounding, from exertion and exhilaration, he pauses to look back. The view grows more spectacular with every step: the inverse of the view from Rainbow Street, a tide of tan houses rising before him that makes his head spin. He feels like he could lose his balance and tumble back down, cartwheeling. He lets Ben and then Mike pass and frowns when Eddie doesn’t follow. He wasn’t waiting for him or anything, but...

Eddie’s still down on the stage, one hand shading his eyes as he watches them. Richie can’t make out his features; he’s small already with distance.

Richie cups his hands around his mouth. “Eds! Come on!”

Eddie cocks his head and raises his mouth, but Richie can’t hear him. Richie wonders if Eddie can hear him, either.

“C’mon, you wuss!” he shouts even louder. “You pansy!”

Eddie flips him off.

With a laugh, Richie returns the favor, and turns back to clamber up the stairs after the others, using his hands when it gets too steep to stand up straight without toppling over backwards.

At the top, it feels like they’re in the sky, in the atmosphere, even though the amphitheater is in a crease of Amman’s hills. It’s the sheerness of the drop before them, Richie thinks dizzily. He retrieves his camera from Bev and takes a picture straight down from the edge, but it doesn’t capture the feeling of standing there, his toes hanging over.

The four of them make a joint effort of asking a kid who’s perched fearlessly on the wall above them to take their picture—_what’s ‘picture’ again? oh that’s right, _suura_, with that emphatic S, of fucking course, _sssuuuraaa—and when Richie looks at it they’re all in shadow except somehow the angle allowed the kid to get Eddie, too, down at the bottom, a white smudge in the sun.

They make it back down, more cautiously, this time, because they have to face the open sky. When the four of them rejoin Eddie, Huda, and Saleh, they realize they didn’t even test out whether they could hear what the others were saying, from the top. The distance made them forget, and it’s too late now.

Their third and final stop is at the top of the next hill, the Citadel. Richie pulls his hoodie off as the van winds up the narrow streets and hands an earbud to Mike, who’s next to him now and jacketless, too. They laugh more than they listen, looking through the photos Bev took on Richie’s camera.

As they unfold themselves from the van, Richie notices Eddie has discarded his puffy white jacket, too, now that they’re on the top of the hill, blanketed in sunlight. But what really draws Richie’s eye is something else entirely, something slung around Eddie’s hip, like a holster. Richie’s mouth drops open and he nearly falls out of the van, raising a trembling finger.

“_What _is _that_!?”

Eddie rolls his eyes. “It’s a fanny pack, asshole. It’s very practical.”

Richie makes an incredulous noise in the back of his throat. “Have you been wearing this under your winter pelt the _whole time_, Yeti?”

He scowls at the nickname. “What, like I’m supposed to wear it _over_ the fucking coat? The waistband would never reach.”

“There is a secret option number three that you’re ignoring, which is simply not to wear it at all. Like any self-respecting twenty-year-old.”

“Twenty-_one_-year-old.”

“That’s worse! What do you even need it for? You got pockets.”

“I can’t fit everything in my pockets.”

“What’s ‘everything’?”

“My wallet, my inhaler, Purell, some Band-Aids, my passport—”

“You’re carrying your _passport_?”

“Yeah, of course. You’re not supposed to leave your passport in a hotel, genius. That’s a good fucking way to get your identity stolen.”

Richie drags a hand down his face. “Oh my god, you’re _killing_ me, Eds,” he groans. “So the fanny pack is a serious thing? Really? It’s not ironic?”

“Ironic? What, like your fucking _shirt_?” Eddie indignantly flaps his hand at Richie’s button-down. “That’s covered in fucking, uh, uh, _parrots _or whatever?”

Richie looks down at his sleeve and then back at Eddie, incredulous. “Seriously, Eds? Parrots? These are flamingos.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not a goddamn _bird— person—_”

“Clearly.”

“And don’t call me Eds!”

Bev slices her arm through the air between them. “Hey, morons,” she says, “we’re leaving you behind if you take any longer.” She gives them both a look and then returns to the others, who are chatting several yards away.

Richie and Eddie glance back at each other. After a moment, Richie chuckles and holds out a hand. “Okay, here’s the deal. I can get over the fanny pack if I can call you Eds.”

Eddie looks down at Richie’s outstretched hand. He lifts his eyes back to Richie’s. He smirks.

“Never.”

Eddie turns on his heel, leaving Richie with his hand out, stunned. After a moment, Richie shakes his head and, smiling in disbelief, trots after him. He ruffles Eddie’s hair as he passes and then twists out of the way of Eddie’s avenging fist, laughing and skipping backwards and feeling young and giddy when Eddie calls him names.

The Citadel is one of the seven hills of ancient Amman, when it was known as _‘Ain Ghazal_, or _Ammon_, or _Philadelphia_. Ruins linger from each of these periods, but the most spectacular are the handful of thick pillars and one precarious arch that remain of the Temple of Hercules, standing for two thousand years. Ben reads the plaque aloud to the rest of them, and when he’s done, Richie nudges Eddie.

“Go stand over there, Eds, I want to take your picture.”

Eddie narrows his eyes. “Why?”

“I want a picture of the ruins and your fanny pack. The dichotomy. A monumental testament to humanity’s desire to push the limits of innovation… and the Temple of Hercules.”

Eddie’s screws his mouth up tight for a second, but then laughter bursts through, like a dam breaking. He shakes his head, his eyes crinkling. “You’re an idiot, Richie,” he says. But he smiles and lets Richie take the picture—even though he flips off the camera at the last moment when Richie tells him to smize—and in it, the sun is shining golden on him.

In the van on their way back to the office, Eddie climbs into the back after him and asks to see the pictures he took. Eddie clicks his seatbelt next to Richie’s hip, his khakis brushing Richie’s threadbare jeans, and pulls out his Purell to rub it into his hands. After a second, Richie offers him an earbud, and Eddie hesitates before taking it and rolling it in his still-wet hands until it’s disinfected, too, and then puts it in his ear.

“Any requests?” Richie asks. His hands are sweaty on the iPod, his thumb poised over the scroll wheel.

Eddie shrugs. “I don’t really mind. Whatever you want.”

Richie decides not to overthink it. He hits shuffle and then pulls out his camera and Eddie bends over it to look the pictures as he clicks through. And when the first lyrics play—_I’m feeling rough I’m feeling raw I’m in the prime of my life_—Eddie hums, “Oh, I like this song,” and Richie smiles, heart pounding, and turns it up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the title song is “empire state of mind” by jay-z ft. alicia keys. the song they listen to at the end is “time to pretend” by mgmt.
> 
> al-quds falafel is a real place that really does have the best gd falafel in the world, although the 35-cent ones actually don’t have sesame seeds, so i took some creative liberties there. the sesame ones are 60 cents and are worth it.
> 
> thanks as always to @jajs who is currently planning for a cross-country move so she can be within driving distance of me and not for any other reasons at all.
> 
> next time: stan and bill finally appear! the gang gets drunk on cheap beer! richie and eddie dance to an objectively bad song!
> 
> arabic glossary:  
‘afwan:* excuse me; sorry  
‘ammiya: colloquial arabic; dialect  
jakeit: jacket (fuck yeah)  
suura: picture
> 
> *note: the ‘ represents a letter in arabic called ‘ayn that we don’t have in english that’s known as a “voiced pharyngeal fricative”. imo, it’s actually easier to learn how to pronounce than the fucking emphatic s (and the other emphatic consonants).


	4. january iv: how can someone inconsistent mess up so consistently

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one is really long, y'all. strap in!
> 
> also there's lots of music references so it might be helpful to listen as you read? idk but i like to do that when i'm reading. :)

**richie:** i cant post to fb bc internet at the hotel sucks but i emailed u a pic  
**carla:** oooh k looking now  
omg.  
**richie:** i know.  
**carla:** well  
he may be only 87% straight but hes 100% richie toziers next mistake lol

Orientation continues. Over the next week, they learn more about Jordan. They learn what to wear and what not to wear, what to do and what not to do. They learn it’s rude show the soles of their feet. They learn to cover their shoulders and not to wear shorts. Richie learns not to put his arm around Bev so much and starts putting it around Ben or Mike instead, or Eddie, if he wants to get shoved.

They learn important Arabic phrases and when to use them. They learn to say _ma sha allah _when they want to express joy or appreciation and _yalla _when they want someone to hurry up. They learn when to call someone _habibi_, “my dear,” which is often. They get a crash course in taxicab _‘ammiya_ and spend a morning giving each other directions around the office. Richie directs Eddie into a supply closet and closes the door behind him.

They learn about Jordanian food, primarily by eating it. Bev learns that a cocktail from Lebnani Snack is just a cup of fruit and not a mixed drink. Ben learns that the red sauce on his falafel makes his mouth burn and that Mike will eat it if he can’t. Richie learns that he can order a sandwich on a type of bread that sounds like _cock _and makes jokes about choking on it until Eddie yells at him to shut up.

They get to know Huda and Saleh better. They learn Huda sings in her church choir every weekend. They learn Saleh grew up on a farm. They learn they both went to college in the States. (They learn to call America “the States.”)

They get to know _each other_ better. They learn Ben lost fifty pounds in the last two years. They learn Bev lives with her aunt. They learn Mike also grew up on a farm, and he and Saleh become fast friends. They learn Richie is from in Orange County and give him shit for it. They learn Eddie’s mom held him back a grade because he was sick and so he’s the oldest of them all.

They get cell phones, little Nokia bricks that text with the number pad. They get their class schedules, and Richie learns he has four of five classes with Eddie. They get assigned their host families, and Richie learns he’s rooming with someone named Bill.

They learn that study abroad is an emotional process. They’re told that right now they’re in the “honeymoon” period. They’re told that it will eventually end.

They don’t entirely believe it.

On the last day of orientation, their new knowledge is put to the test. Huda splits them into teams—Richie, Eddie, and Ben on one and Bev and Mike on the other—and gives them instructions. They have to navigate to different listed locations by themselves, take pictures to document that they were there, and then meet Huda across the city in a coffee shop in Mecca Mall. Whoever meets her there first with the most locations wins.

“Make the pictures fun, too, that’s part of the judging. I’ll print the best ones out and put them on the wall of my office,” says Huda. “Yes, Eddie?”

Eddie lowers his hand. “Will there be a prize this time?”

Huda laughs. “Yes.”

Richie turns to Bev and Mike, his face grave. “I’ll try to keep him from making the taxi driver run you over.”

The teams have different lists with only some overlap, so when they catch their cabs near Seventh Circle, they head in different directions. Richie’s stomach grumbles as soon as they’re in the cab.

“Damn, so glad we’re going to Rainbow Street,” he says. “I could really go for some Al-Quds Falafel right now.”

Eddie twists around immediately, his voice stern. “There is _no_ _time_ for you to get falafel. We’re in a fucking race.”

“But I’m _starving_—”

“I’m starving, too, asshole, but I’m taking this shit seriously—”

“It’s a fucking scavenger hunt, Eds, not a top-secret mission. _Kids_ do them. How serious can it be?”

“There is a _prize _and there are _teams_. Therefore, it is something that we can _lose_. You are on my team; losing is not an option.”

Richie laughs. “Yowza. I should have asked Huda what’s the _‘ammiya _for ‘hangry’.”

Eddie turns around to face forward again and flips him off over his shoulder.

“So glad I’m on the same team as you guys,” Ben pipes up. “You two are so funny.”

“Sarcasm, Haystack?”

“No, I was being serious.”

Richie snorts in disbelief. “Ben, you’re a national treasure.”

In the ensuing quiet, the driver tries to make small talk with Eddie in _‘ammiya_. Richie notices Eddie stammering through it, unsure exactly what’s being asked, so he leans forward, resting his elbow on the back of Eddie’s seat, and chats with the driver instead, in an awkward mixture of MSA and _‘ammiya_, whichever comes to mind first. He tries to explain that Eddie is too hangry to speak Arabic and he cobbles together the phrase _crazy because of hunger_. He and the driver both laugh when Eddie rolls his eyes.

Eddie has the driver drop them off at the entrance to Rainbow Street so they can more thoroughly explore it, and the three of them begin striding down the cobbled sidewalk. It’s a beautiful day, sunny and warm with a refreshing breeze, and Richie drapes his arms around Eddie and Ben’s shoulders, practically whistling.

“Man, I can’t wait for falafel. You think Al-Quds has cock bread?” he asks, grinning. “I could go for some hot cock in my mouth right about now.”

Eddie shoves his arm off. “Shut the fuck up, Richie. That wasn’t funny the first twenty times you said it, what makes you think it’s funny now?”

“What would be funny about it? I’m starving for cock. Ravenous for cock!”

“It’s pronounced _ka‘ak_, you idiot, and if you order a fucking _cock sandwich_ just to be an unfunny asshole, I swear to _god_—”

“Whoa, Eds, calm down. I bet you’d be in a much better mood if you got some cock in you, too.” He has to twist away, laughing, to avoid Eddie punching him in the stomach.

“You’re not fucking funny, Richie,” Eddie bites out, waving the scavenger hunt sheet at him. “It is seriously the _stupidest_, _laziest_ joke I have ever heard, and if we lose to Bev and Mike because you wanted to get a sandwich for a fucking dumbass _bit_—”

“It’s not just for a bit, I really am hungry!” Richie insists. “But if it makes you feel better, Eds, I’ll run ahead now and order it before you guys even get there.” Before Eddie can respond, Richie starts jogging backwards and gives them both a little salute before taking off for real.

There’s a wait at Al-Quds. Of course. He gets in line anyway, hoping that he can get his sandwich in time not to slow down their progress. Unfortunately, it takes him a while to remember from orientation that lines aren’t really _a thing _in Jordan and realize that what he thought was a line was really just a mishmash of people calling out their orders while he stupidly waited for a turn that would never come, which loses him even more time. When he does manage to wiggle his way up front, he remembers in a flash that Eddie said he was hungry, too, so he orders a second sandwich for him. He feels a little guilty about taking so long, but the idea of cheering up Eddie with some food gives him a weird thrill in his stomach, like butterflies.

By the time he gets his order, Eddie and Ben are waiting for him down the street. He trots over, smiling and holding up the plastic bag of sandwiches.

“Sorry about the wait, Eds, but I got—”

“_Seriously_?” Eddie groans, frowning and crossing his arms. “You got _two_? You really wasted the extra time getting _two _sandwiches? How fucking selfish can you be, Richie? Jesus Christ, I told you I didn’t want to waste this time in the first place.”

Richie’s heart falls, the smile wiped from his face. He swallows. “Uh… one of them was for you, actually.”

“Oh.” Eddie at least has the good manners to look embarrassed. “Well. You shouldn’t have done that.”

Richie bites his cheek and takes a deep breath, feeling like a kicked dog. “Yeah, apparently not,” he says, his voice blessedly even. “Sorry for being so inconsiderate.”

He can tell Eddie’s staring at him, but he very deliberately does not return his gaze. Instead, he turns down the road and says over his shoulder, “C’mon, let’s get going. I can see Eddie’s not going to chill out until we find something on our list.”

Eddie huffs a little behind him. “I _am_ chill.”

“Oh, are you? That must be why I feel like I’m on a fucking vacation right now.”

Eddie clams up after that, and he and Ben don’t try to walk next to Richie, which is fine, because suddenly Richie wants to be done with this whole thing as soon as possible. He’s not even hungry anymore, the bag of sandwiches swinging at his side, and the butterflies he got thinking of making Eddie happy have turned to lead in his stomach. He fervently wishes he had been on Bev and Mike’s team instead.

“Hey, look.” He points to the little bodega on the corner. The name on the sign is familiar. “That’s on our list, right? Gimme the camera, Ben. I’ll take it.” He waves Ben and Eddie across the street and quickly snaps their picture. In it, they’re standing awkwardly in front of the store, barely smiling.

“Perfect,” Richie says dully. “Let’s keep going.”

The next place is a ceramics shop. Richie drops the camera in Eddie’s hands and stands with Ben in front of the shop. He makes an effort to look like he’s enjoying himself, pulling a face and giving Ben bunny ears. He drops it all as soon as Eddie lowers the camera.

“Want to see it?” Eddie asks, smiling nervously.

“I don’t think we have the time for that, do we?” Richie says coolly. “What’s the next place?”

Eddie’s smile falters. “Uh…” He fumbles out the piece of paper and frowns. “It says, ‘Books at-sign Café’.”

Richie peers over his shoulder. The name is stylized: Books@Cafe. “Books-at-Café? All right. Let’s go.”

They walk for what feels like a long time without seeing it. Rainbow Street has a general downward curve to it that gets steeper the farther they go, until it feels like they’re going to walk off the hill entirely. The shops and restaurants get fewer and farther between; the buildings look increasingly residential. Slowly, they come to a stop.

“Maybe we should ask someone,” Ben says uncertainly.

“Those guys over there would probably know,” Richie says, nodding toward two middle-aged men smoking outside arestaurant. “Who wants to be brave?”

Ben shakes his head, holding up his hands defensively. “My Arabic sucks. We’d probably end up in Israel or something.”

Eddie chews on his bottom lip. “I could try, but what do I say? **If you please**...”

Richie shakes his head. “No, remember, Huda said in _‘ammiya_ you say, **_Excuse me_—**”

“I don’t remember how to say anything in _‘ammiya_, I only know the MSA.” Eddie worries his lip even harder. “I’m gonna sound stupid if I ask. You should do it, Richie.”

“Well, I don’t really remember anything either…”

“You do, though,” Eddie insists. “You talked to the cab driver like all the way down here.”

“Yeah, you sounded pretty good,” Ben adds. Eddie nods.

Richie runs a hand through his hair. “All right, I’ll try it. I’ll say, **_Excuse me_—** Wait, what’s ‘where’?”

“_Ayna_.”

“No, that’s the MSA again.” He puts on his British Guy Voice: “‘Prithee, my good man, whither Books@Cafe?’”

Eddie snorts. “Okay, yeah. _‘Ammiya _is, like… _wayna_?”

“_Wayn_, I remember now,” says Richie firmly. “Okay, I think I got it. Here goes nothing.” He takes a deep breath and crosses the street. The men look up at him with interest when they see him approaching, and he nods. “_Ahlan_.”

“_Ahlan fiik._”

His heart is suddenly pounding. It’s like he’s about to deliver his first line onstage, and he’s barely been to rehearsal. “Uhh, **_excuse me, where is_ **Books@Cafe?” he says quickly, the words spilling out of his mouth, nearly on top of one another.

The guys glance at each other, and for a split second Richie thinks he fucked up, like maybe he somehow spoke German instead of Arabic, but then one lifts his arm and points down the road, cigarette delicately perched between his fingers, and Richie listens in amazement as the guy tells him it’s down another block and to the right—and Richie _understands_ him. He can’t stop the smile spreading across his face.

“Okay, _shukran_!” he says, grinning. The guys give him a smile back and nod, and he waves for Ben and Eddie to join him. “C’mon, it’s this way,” he calls, exhilarated.

“You understood him?” Ben asks, trotting after him.

Richie nods, still grinning. “Yeah! Like, he said a few words I didn’t get, but I still understood what he was saying. He used the direction words we learned the other day and everything.”

“That’s awesome!” says Ben. “Thanks, Richie!”

“Yeah, thanks.”

“No problem, I’m glad I did it. It was cool.”

They turn right after a block, like the guy said they should, and sure enough, a block and a half later they find the sign for Books@Cafe. Something about it all makes Richie feel incredible. He’s almost forgotten how shitty it felt having Eddie shoot him down earlier. Almost.

Eddie hands Ben the camera and joins Richie in front of the building, which according to the sign is a bookstore, a bar, _and_ an internet café. _Ma sha allah_, Richie thinks appreciatively.

Suddenly, Richie’s stomach grumbles loudly, finally reminding him why he got the sandwiches in the first place. He reaches into the plastic bag, saying, “All right, Eddie, I know you’re being, like, the vengeful god of scavenger hunts right now, but I’m a mere mortal and I have to eat. Hope that’s all right with you.”

“Oh,” Eddie says dumbly. “Yeah, go ahead.”

“Cool, glad I have your permission.” He pulls out a sandwich and carefully peels back the paper. Eddie shifts his weight from one foot to the other awkwardly, looking like he wants to say something about it.

“You guys ready?” Ben calls.

“Yep,” says Richie, taking a bite. “Take it away, Haystack.”

“Um…” Eddie clears his throat. “Huda said the pictures should be fun.”

Richie glances sideways at him. “Really? You know the word ‘fun’?”

Eddie bites his bottom lip again, his arms crossed. “Look, I—” he starts, looking away. “I’m sorry, okay? I know I’m a— I know I was a dick earlier. About the falafel. It was nice of you to get me one, and I was an asshole about it. And— and I don’t want you to be mad at me. So. Sorry.”

Richie purses his lips, studying Eddie. He somehow manages to look annoyed even when contrite, glancing furtively at Richie under his deeply furrowed brows. Something about it tugs at Richie’s chest. He has to laugh.

“Ah, I could never stay mad at you, Eds,” he says, ruffling his hair. “All is forgiven.” He fishes out the other sandwich and holds it up, grinning. “Let me feed this to you.”

Eddie’s face shifts quickly from relief to confusion. “_What?”_

Richie laughs. “For the picture,” he explains, wiggling his own half-eaten sandwich at Eddie, “and you feed me mine. It’ll be funny. And I’ll still get to eat, so win-win.”

Eddie looks skeptical but gives a hesitant smile as he takes Richie’s sandwich. “Yeah, all right.” They strike a pose, each holding a sandwich to the other’s mouth, and Ben snaps the picture. Eddie looks at it afterwards, and he huffs out a laugh. “Okay, it does look funny.”

“That’s what I’m here for, Eds,” says Richie with a grin. “Talking to strangers and being funny. Now where to next? We gotta cream Bev and Mike.”

After that, Richie finally starts feeling the adrenaline of the race. The next few places pass in a blur. Richie gets Ben to pretend to be boosting him over the tall fence of an NGO, and later directs Eddie and Ben into a Charlie’s Angels pose outside another internet café. After that, they have to hail a cab to take them to the next area. Richie jokingly rolls up his pants leg and sticks his calf into the street like Bugs Bunny to get one to stop, and Eddie is still laughing when they get in.

On the next hill over, in a neighborhood called Jebel al-Weibdeh, they startle the driver by all screaming at him to stop when they see the antique gift store they’re looking for. The car screeches to a halt, and Eddie pays quickly while Richie and Ben jump out.

“C’mon, Eds, it’s our turn for a picture, _yalla_, c’mon,” Richie shouts, waving him over. As Eddie jogs over, Richie impulsively bends down and holds out his arms. “Jump! I’ll catch you!”

“Like you’re strong enough, Gumby arms,” Eddie retorts, but he’s still jogging toward him, and Richie can see adventure and competition in his eyes, can see _We’ll show _them _fun pictures_ on his face, and when Eddie reaches him, he puts a hand on Richie’s shoulder to steady himself and a little _whoa_ escapes his throat when Richie scoops him up.

“Good thing you’re so short, Eds,” Richie breathes, grinning for the camera. “I couldn’t do this with Haystack.”

“I'm average height, and don’t call me Eds,” he says without his usual ire, his face red as he starts to squirm. “All right, put me down, we need to find the French Institute next.”

They’re practically running now, caught up in the thrill, Eddie leading the way down the shady street. The French Institute is only a block away, and Ben and Richie put on blasé expressions and pretend to smoke invisible cigarettes, just _ever-so-French_, outside the frosted glass door. Mere seconds after Eddie snaps the shutter, the door bursts open, and Bev and Mike spill out.

“Aha!” Bev exclaims, pointing dramatically at Richie, her red hair wild. “So we meet again!”

“Beverly Marsh, my old nemesis,” Richie proclaims, grinning. He almost hugs her but stops himself, remembering their cultural training. He settles for patting her on the shoulder instead.

“Don’t fraternize with the enemy, Richie,” Eddie says, joining them with a smirk. “They probably want to cheat off us.”

Bev scoffs. “As if. We’re almost done. We just have to find Al-Afghani Gifts.”

“Oh,” Richie says, “we just came from there—” Suddenly, Eddie slaps a hand over his mouth, cutting him off. Richie laughs, shoving Eddie’s hand away. “I’m not gonna give away our secrets, man. I want to win, too.”

“So you only have one place left?” Ben asks.

Mike tilts his head. “Well, technically two,” he says. “But we gave up trying to find Daret al-Funoun.”

Eddie pulls their sheet out of his pocket and looks at it. “Fuck, that one’s on our list, too. It’s hard to find?”

“Yeah, but no fraternizing with the enemy,” Bev says teasingly. “Unless you want to tell us where Al-Afghani is.”

“Not a chance,” says Eddie, just as Richie holds up both hands, pointing in opposite directions.

“Wow, I hate you two being on the same side for once,” Bev remarks. “It’s the worst.”

“Yeah, we thought you would be at each other’s throats by now,” Mike laughs.

Richie hooks an arm around Eddie and pulls him flush against his side. “Who, _us_? Doesn’t sound like us, does it, Eds?” He looks down at Eddie, grinning, and realizes they’re so close that he can make out the dusting of faded freckles across Eddie’s nose. His heart leaps into his throat.

Eddie glances up at him, mock innocence in his brown eyes. “Nope, not at all,” he says lightly, smirking at Bev and Mike. Richie nearly jumps out of his skin when he feels Eddie loop an arm around his waist. “Pretty sure we’ve never once argued.”

Richie smiles broadly, trying to ignore the flush creeping up his neck. “That’s right. Two peas in a pod. We finish each other’s sandwiches.” Eddie laughs and nods.

Bev rolls her eyes. “Ben, do you need us to rescue you? This must be torture.” She gestures at Richie and Eddie.

Ben chuckles. “I’m good, actually,” he says. “Plus, I’d rather be on the winning team.”

“_Ohhh_!” Richie exclaims, putting a fist to his mouth. “Haystack with the _savagery_. Fucking _roast_ them, Ben!”

Ben gives a sheepish smile.

“Well, I guess we’ll find out soon enough who the winners are,” says Mike fairly.

“Yeah.” Bev sticks out her tongue and starts stepping backwards. “Smell ya later, losers,” she calls before they turn around and head off down the street.

Eddie instantly drops his arm from Richie’s waist and turns to him, eyes wide. “We should get a cab _now_. Daret al-Funoun is the only one left on our list, and we can probably beat them to Mecca Mall if we go right away.”

“That’s a good idea,” agrees Ben.

Richie shakes his head. “No way. They’re going to find Al-Afghani in like two seconds and then they’ll be in a cab, too. And if they beat us there in traffic, we’ll lose.”

Eddie raises an eyebrow, a smile spreading across his face. When he speaks, his voice is low and mischievous; it curls hot in Richie’s stomach. “What are you suggesting?”

Richie grins and leans in. “I’m suggesting we find Daret al-Funoun,” he whispers, “and we do it fucking _fast_. C’mon!” And without thinking, he wraps his fingers around Eddie’s wrist, and they take off down the street, Ben close on their heels.

Richie doesn’t hold onto Eddie’s wrist long; they break apart at a small park to ask two different people where Daret al-Funoun is. When Richie gets his directions, he whips his head around and sees that Eddie is already loping off in the same direction, gesturing urgently for Richie and Ben to follow him.

Their sneakers pound the pavement as they take off down a side street. They turn right at a hospital and then wind down and around into a residential neighborhood. When they reach a fork in the road, they slow to a stop, Richie breathing hardest of them all, his hands braced on his knees.

“Which way?” Ben asks, a little winded, looking left and right. To the left, the street curves uphill; to the right, down.

“My guy said to turn right,” Richie pants.

“Really?” Eddie asks, biting his lip. “I thought mine said left.”

“Split up?” Ben suggests.

Richie exhales hard. “Fuck, okay,” he says, straightening up. “I’ll go right, you two go left with the camera. If you find it, just take the picture and have the cab come down my way to pick me up. If I find it, I’ll scream bloody murder and you guys come running. And, Eds, if I don’t make it—”

Eddie makes a face. “Why wouldn’t you make it?”

“_If I don’t make it_…” Richie insists, taking a step toward Eddie and placing a hand on his shoulder. He looks down at him earnestly. “Tell your mother I love her.”

Eddie rolls his eyes and presses his lips tight together. A smile breaks through nonetheless. “Fuck off, Richie,” he says, without malice, and he and Ben take off in the other direction.

Richie jogs down the narrow sidewalk along a high stone wall, keeping an eye out for anything that looks like it could be Daret al-Funoun. He pauses as he passes a steep set of steps cascading into downtown Amman—the view of the buildings on the hillside is beautiful—but he forces himself to keep going. He wants to win, and, more than that, he wants to be the reason they do.

Then he catches sight of a tall, thin chrome sign hanging by a doorway cut out of the wall. He stops in front of it, his face breaking into a smile as he reads it. He takes a deep breath and cups his hands around his mouth. He’s never been so grateful for his theater training, because he knows he can fucking _project_.

“_EDDIE! BEN! C’MERE!”_

For several long seconds, he thinks they didn’t hear him, even though he’s not far from where they parted ways. But then he hears shoes thudding on concrete, and Eddie and Ben come racing downhill into view. The wind is blowing Eddie’s hair back, and his face is flushed with effort and adrenaline. Richie smiles even wider at the sight.

“Eddie!” Richie calls, waving wildly. “You’re gonna love me so much!”

“You found it!?” Eddie shouts back.

Richie points madly at the sign next to him, and Eddie shoves the camera at Ben—who nearly fumbles it, which would be the twist of the fucking century, Richie thinks a little hysterically—and then picks up speed so he’s practically flying down the hill. Richie watches him for a few fleeting moments, a little giddy, a little dumb—until he realizes suddenly that Eddie’s not slowing down quickly enough for the steepness of the slope. He looks like he’s going to plow right into the wall.

Barely thinking, Richie leaps forward and braces himself, his arms wide, and the next moment Eddie skids into him with a yelp, knocking Richie into the wall so his head cracks against it and stars burst behind his eyes.

“Holy shit, holy shit, I’m so sorry,” Eddie’s gasping, his hands clutching Richie’s forearms.

“No, no, it’s fine,” Richie laughs, even though his vision is swimming. “I’m only _slightly_ concussed.”

“Fuck, I just got so excited, I had so much energy—”

“It’s fine, Eds, don’t worry about it—”

“You found it. You fucking _found_ it!”

“Yeah, I found it,” Richie chuckles. As his vision clears, he realizes that Eddie is still practically in his arms, looking up at him with his warm, sparkly eyes, full of both concern and elation, his face upturned so that Richie can nearly feel Eddie’s warm breath on his face. His own breath catches in his throat, stomach flip-flopping.

“P-picture?” Richie croaks.

Eddie nods and steps back, still breathless, and turns toward Ben, who has caught up to them and is readying the camera.

“Ready?” Ben asks.

“Yep, take it away, Haystack,” Richie calls, pushing himself up from the wall, a little wobbly, and plastering a smile on—when he feels Eddie’s arm snake around his waist again, this time stronger and surer. When Richie looks down at him, mouth open in an incredulous half-smile, Eddie is facing the camera, smiling widely. Richie’s head still feels slow and fuzzy, but this time he thinks it might be from the feeling of Eddie’s—

“We’re good!” Ben proclaims, snapping Richie out of it.

Eddie’s arm drops from his waist again, and he grins up at Richie, elated. “I can’t believe we fucking got it.”

“Yeah, we fucking did,” Richie breathes, head still reeling, his neck hot. “Now _yalla_, boys, let’s go get our prize!”

***

Mecca Mall is huge, and they have to ride the escalators to the very top to meet Huda. Richie realizes that Eddie is the kind of person who always walks up the escalator, even though they’re moving stairs and will do the job for you. Eddie just rolls his eyes when Richie points this out and tugs on his arm, and Richie trudges up them, too, grumbling good-naturedly.

On the top floor, they catch sight of the coffeeshop and, most importantly, Huda. She’s sitting in an armchair, chatting with Bev, Mike, and two other people, who have their backs to them. She notices them right away and stands as Eddie jogs over, Richie and Ben following close behind.

“You made it,” she exclaims.

“Finally,” Bev adds, smirking. “Looks like two heads are better than three.”

“Don’t be so sure. Slow and steady, Bevvie.” Richie winks, and Bev makes a face.

“Yeah, we have all our pictures—” Eddie starts to say.

“We’ll go over the scavenger hunt in a bit,” Huda says kindly, “but I wanted you all to meet Bill and Stan first. Or, well, I guess you already know Bill, Eddie, but the rest of you.” And, smiling, she gestures to the other two people sitting at the coffee table.

Richie finally looks at the two new people: both young men, both handsome. Or, more accurately, _one_ handsome—with auburn hair and kind blue eyes, an arm draped languidly over the back of the sofa—and one, like, _beautiful_—dark curly hair, quiet eyes, and an angular yet soft face, legs crossed neatly as he sips tea. Richie barely registers that the handsome guy, who must be Bill, is exchanging a quick, familiar handshake with Eddie; the overall effect of the two guys sitting there next to each other, like models, makes him put a hand to his face and laugh, overwhelmed.

“Holy shit,” he giggles, looking around at everyone—not just the new guys but Bev and Mike and Ben and, most of all, Eddie, who has just been an overload of cuteness all day—and taking in just how _fucking hot_ they all are. His shoulders shake, intermittent giggles spilling out. “What the fuck, you guys, are you all Punking me? Am I actually on the newest cycle of _ANTM_? And I’m the one Ty-Ty gives the bad weave and kicks off right away because I can’t booty tooch?”

Everyone looks back at Richie with bemusement. After a second, Bev starts giggling, too.

The beautiful guy—Stan, presumably—clears his throat. “Huda,” he says seriously, “I think it was really brave of you to allow someone in the program whose grasp of even English is tenuous at best.”

Before Huda can respond, Richie bursts into loud laughter. He seizes Stan’s hand and shakes it hard. “Well done. Never have I been so thoroughly dunked on so immediately,” he says, his tone congratulatory. “Richie Tozier. Stan, I take it?”

“Stanley, yes.”

“Stan the Man, Stanley the Manley, Staniel Boone… Stan of Green Gables. Yes, we’ve got a lot to work with here. I like it. And that makes you Big Bill.” Richie turns from Stan to shake Bill’s hand.

Bill smiles amiably and nods. “Yep, Bill Denbrough. Nice to m-m-meet you.”

Richie grins. “Must be an honor, actually. You’re meeting one of the people on the winning scavenger hunt team.”

Bev and Mike exchange a look. Bev rolls her eyes. “We’ve been here for like twenty minutes, Richie,” she says. “There’s no way you won.”

“You shouldn’t count your chickens before they egg, Beverly. Farmer Mike oughta’ve taught you that one.”

“You’re making even less sense than normal, _akhi_.”

“_Be that as it may—_”

“We got every place on the list,” Eddie interjects smugly.

“What? No, you didn’t,” Bev scoffs. “Y’all liars.”

“I mean, we have the photographic evidence to prove it…” says Ben softly, as if he doesn’t want Bev to hear him.

“Fuck yeah, Ben,” Richie crows. “Put her in her _place_ with that trash talk.” Bev flips him off.

Ben blushes. “No, no, that’s not what I—”

“Yeah, show Huda our pictures, Ben,” Eddie insists. “We got pictures in front of everywhere.”

“_And_ they’re _fun_,” Richie adds.

“Yeah!”

Ben reluctantly pulls out his camera, and Huda leans over to look at the screen. “I’ll start at the beginning,” he says.

“Actually, I haven’t seen all of these,” says Eddie, getting up to stand behind Huda.

“Yeah, me neither,” Richie adds, joining him, “and it’s something that perhaps is never-before-seen the world over. A post-apology Eddie Kaspbrak.” Eddie elbows him in the side, and he laughs.

Huda cranes her neck to look back at them, raising an eyebrow. “‘Post-apology’?”

At the same time, Richie and Eddie both say, “It’s a long story.”

“No jinxes!” Richie exclaims immediately, catching the glint in Bev’s eye. “This is a jinx-free zone, Marsh, you terrorist.”

Ben shows Huda how to click through the pictures on his camera, and Richie and Eddie lean in. Richie recognizes the first one—Ben and Eddie standing awkwardly in front of the supermarket, just after Richie and Eddie argued. Eddie’s mouth is pulled back in what’s supposed to be a smile, but his dark eyebrows are furrowed; he looks like he’s in pain.

“Nice face, Eds.”

“Shut up. _You_ try smiling when your teammate has just sabotaged your chances of winning by buying you a sandwich you didn’t ask for.”

“Oh, yeah, I’m sure it was such a hardship. How can you ever forgive me?”

When Huda clicks to the next picture, Richie realizes his face isn’t much better. Sure, he’s smiling, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. Fortunately, Eddie lets it go without comment.

“Now this one is cute,” Huda giggles as she turns to the third picture: Richie and Eddie stuffing each other’s faces with falafel.

Richie pats Eddie on the back. “Aww, our first picture together, just the two of us,” he says, smiling. “We look adorable. Let’s blow it up and put it on the mantle.”

“Shut up, Richie.”

“I love it,” Huda says. “That one’s going on my wall.”

“Hell yeah, Huda’s first wall thing. In your face, Marsh.”

Huda clicks through the next couple, chuckling at them. “Looks like you guys really got into the spirit,” she laughs, landing on the one of Richie carrying Eddie outside of the gift shop.

“Eddie and I just love affordable antiques,” Richie jokes. “We’re thinking of redecorating our condo.”

“Shut _up_, Richie, oh my _god_.” Eddie takes a beat and then mumbles, “And I told you, I want something postmodern.”

Richie bursts out laughing, slapping Eddie on the back. “Oh, man, Eds gets off a _good_ one!”

Mike laughs, too, shaking his head. He turns to Stan and Bill. “And they didn’t understand why I thought they were friends before coming here.”

Bill smiles slightly, watching Eddie with interest. “Yeah, I g-g-guess I could see it.”

Stan also appraises them, an eyebrow raised. “They do have a certain energy,” he says evenly. “Like two convicts from the same prison.”

Richie starts laughing even harder, pounding the back of the chair. “Damn, Stan,” he exclaims, wiping at his eye, “I’m calling it: you just won today. No one’s going to say anything better than that for the rest of the day.”

“Least of all you,” Eddie counters.

Richie glances at him, grinning, and back to Stan. “You’re so right, I shouldn’t even try. I should relinquish my comedy crown to Stanley and take a vow of silence.”

“We should all be so lucky,” drawls Stan.

To Richie’s surprise, Huda starts laughing.

“Excuse me, Huda, is this attack on my person humorous to you?” he asks, mock hurt.

“No, no, it’s not that,” she says quickly, pointing at Ben’s camera. “It’s this.”

Richie, Eddie, and Ben lean in, squinting, and all burst into laughter at the picture, in front of the French Institute. Ben and Richie are striking their _tr__è__s French_ poses, but between them Bev is visible through the frosted glass, about to burst through the door, her mouth and eyes wide open and wild with excitement.

“_Ukhti_, you have to see this one,” Richie says, waving her over.

She jumps around the armchair to look and starts giggling, too. “So that’s what my ‘gotcha’ face looks like two seconds before I getcha.”

“You guys have really given me a lot for my wall,” Huda laughs, shaking her head.

“There’s still one more,” says Eddie, urging.

“Yeah,” Richie adds smugly, “and take a good look, everyone, because this is what really shows that Bev is a—”

The words turn to ash in Richie’s mouth as Huda clicks to the next picture. As he knew it would be, it’s him and Eddie in front of Daret al-Funoun. Eddie’s arm is around Richie, and Eddie is smiling widely at the camera, which caught him with his eyes closed. His hair is tousled, and his color is high in his cheeks. He looks ecstatic. Richie could look at that picture all day, if it was just of Eddie.

The second half of the picture, though, makes his stomach lurch. Richie is looking down at Eddie, mouth half-open and smiling, eyebrows bowed upward, eyes tender. His expression is one of naked, unmistakable _longing_, like Eddie is the only person in the world to him. Seeing it makes him wish he could get sucked into the tile, through all the floors of the mall, and into the center of the Earth and stay there until everyone forgets a guy named Richie Tozier ever existed. Rarely has he felt so utterly exposed.

He feels like the silence is stretching—_it _is_ stretching, right? it’s definitely stretching, it’s definitely longer than normal—_but he can’t for the life of him think of anything to say. A joke— a joke would be a fucking _godsend_ right now, but his mind is totally blank except for the image of him looking at Eddie, looking at him so softly, so dearly, so—fuck—_wonderingly_, like he’s astonished and gratified by his closeness. It’s not a look a person gives a friend, it is decidedly _not_, no one could think it was, which is why he needs to tell a joke, to lighten the mood, to distract, to break this fucking _silence—_

“I hate it,” says Eddie.

If possible, Richie’s stomach twists up even more painfully. He grips the back of Huda’s armchair, his knuckles white, and looks straight down at his feet. He doesn’t look at Eddie _or _the picture.

“Aw, why?” asks Huda. “I think it’s cute.”

“My eyes are closed. I look dumb.”

“Not as dumb as Richie,” Bev teases, nudging Richie. “He looks like he has no idea where you guys even are.”

“Well, Eddie _had_ just run him into the wall,” Ben chuckles.

Huda twists around to look at Richie, her eyes concerned. “You ran into a wall? Are you all right?”

Richie forces himself to smile and nod. “Yep, right as rain,” he says. “But, uh, yeah. That’s probably why I seem a little… weird. In that picture. Haha.”

“Just in the picture?” Eddie mutters. Richie can see Eddie looking at him out of his periphery, but Richie can’t bring himself to face him.

“Yep, that’s true, good point,” he says lightly. “I’m a weirdo.” His voice is high as he lets go of the armchair and stands up straight, still refusing to meet Eddie’s gaze.

“First step is admitting it,” says Stan, sipping his tea.

Richie seizes at the opportunity to laugh, praying it sounds even halfway natural. He walks over to the couch where Bill and Stan are sitting and gestures for them to make room for him, hoping to take refuge among people who did _not _just see photographic fucking evidence of his feelings for Eddie.

“C’mon, Stanley, scooch your booch. We’re gonna become friends today.”

“You seem to think there are more English words that end in _-ooch_ than there really are.”

“See, I’m learning so much from you already,” he says, sitting down between Bill and Stan and slinging his own arm over the back of the couch, behind Stan. He senses Eddie watching him, and he very deliberately does not look back.

To Bev’s great chagrin, Huda declares Richie, Eddie, and Ben the winners of the scavenger hunt. Their prize is a basket of treats for the study abroad lounge: candy, chips, fruit, but most importantly coffee—or Nescafe, if you’re Bev and a snob and unwilling to call instant coffee “coffee.” Nescafe seems to be the only kind that people drink in Jordan, other than Turkish coffee, which is bitter and strong and the muddy grounds remain at the bottom of every tiny cup. Richie remembers laughing so hard he had tears in his eyes earlier in the week when Eddie tried to shoot one like an espresso and ended up with black coffee grounds all over his teeth and tongue. He looked like he’d been eating dirt. Now the memory makes Richie feel vaguely ill.

How obvious _is_ he? Bev called him on it right away, true, but he allowed himself to believe that was because of that immediate connection he’d felt with her—or maybe just because she’s a girl and somehow girls always seem to read him like an open book. But now he’s thinking about what Ben and Mike said—about how Richie and Eddie seemed like they were friends long before. Maybe what he _really_ meant is that it’s weird how Richie only just met Eddie and is still constantly talking to Eddie, teasing Eddie… _touching_ Eddie… Because he _does_ touch him a lot—like, more than he should. He tries to spread it around to everyone else, but he knows he probably doesn’t do a good job, and it’s hard for him to tell, when touching Eddie means so much more than touching, like, Ben. (Sorry, Ben.)

His leg is bouncing up and down, and Stan asks him if he could please stop because jostling hot tea is probably the worst thing he could do. Richie tries to still his leg, tries to remember some tips he read online about reducing anxiety, and starts taking deep breaths, only half-listening as Huda tells them they’re going back to Seventh Circle for dinner with some AmmanAbroad staff. He tries to think about what a good day it was overall, how Eddie truly didn’t seem to hate him for most of it, how there were times today when Richie even let himself think, _Maybe…_ Eddie laughed at Richie’s jokes, he put his arm around him (after Richie did it first, but still), and even apologized for being a dick about the falafel. That was something, right? When Richie leans into Stan to mutter a joke in his ear, he steals a glance at Eddie.

A jolt runs down Richie’s spine as their eyes lock. Eddie is staring right back at him, his eyebrows furrowed. He looks like he’s thinking hard, putting together the pieces of a puzzle, and he doesn’t like what’s coming together. Richie feels a stab in his stomach and looks away quickly, laughing too loudly when Stan shoots back a witty retort.

Huda offers to drive them back to Seventh Circle, but she can’t fit everyone in her car, so Richie and Mike volunteer to take a cab back. When Eddie volunteers, too, Richie’s stomach twists uncomfortably again; he tries to smile, but he’s sure it comes out as a grimace. They pile into a taxi—Eddie in front, with a seatbelt, as usual—and give the driver directions.

“Bill and Stan seem nice,” says Mike, once they’re under way.

God bless Mike Hanlon. It’s an easy conversation topic, and Richie _will take it. _“Holy shit, I _love _Stan,” he crows. “Dude is a fucking riot.”

Eddie turns back slightly, frowning. “I didn’t think he was _that _funny.”

“Well, you don’t think anyone’s funny, Eds,” Richie says, too lightly.

“That’s not true, I—”

“It’s okay, Eddie,” Richie says, now too quickly (how does he normally talk, again?), “not having a sense of humor is just your thing. The world needs party poopers, too, you guys make us partiers feel rebellious and cool.”

“Oh, yeah,” Eddie scoffs, “’cause Stan seemed like a real partier.”

“Ah, fuck, now you made me wanna party with Stan,” Richie groans, drumming his fingers on the car door. He gasps and grabs Mike’s shoulder. “Oh my god, it’s our last night in the hotel, we should party tonight. Can we party tonight, Mike? _Pleeease_?”

Mike laughs. “Why are you asking _my_ permission?”

“Because you’re my roommate and therefore co-host.”

“Oh, so the party will be _in our room_, is what you’re saying.”

Richie nods plaintively. “Think about it. Our first and only time throwing a party as roommates, Mikey,” he pleads, “before I stop speaking to you altogether because I’m so jealous you get to be roommates with Stan.”

Eddie exhales loudly. “Oh my fucking god, why don’t you just marry Stan?”

“Are you kidding? I would be _honored_ to marry Stan. I would bear him many strong sons.”

Mike chuckles. “I hate to break it to you, Rich, but Stan is way out of your league.”

“_You think I don’t know that, Michael??_ Jesus _Christ_, let a man dream.”

Eddie cranes his neck around, smirking. “See? I have a sense of humor. What Mike said was very funny.”

***

At dinner, Ben—dear, sweet, oblivious Ben—suggests good-naturedly that the scavenger hunt champions sit near each other, and Richie inwardly groans but outwardly agrees enthusiastically, pumping a triumphant fist. He nevertheless spends most of the meal leaning across the table, chatting animatedly with Stan and Bill. He floats the idea of a party, and Bill’s eyes light up. He assures Richie that he and Stan will bring the booze to celebrate the end of orientation, and Stan reluctantly agrees.

By the time dinner is over, Richie’s calmed down, focused more on the rager he has promised than on the sickening dread he feels every time the picture of him and Eddie flashes before his eyes. Back at the hotel, Richie and Mike clean up their room, stuffing clothes in suitcases and tidying their toiletries. Richie puts on one of his favorite button downs—black with blue ferns and pink unicorns, a gift from Carla—over an old band shirt and ripped black jeans that he kind of regrets bringing because he’s not sure anymore if they’re Jordan-appropriate. Oh, well, at least he can wear them in the hotel.

Bev arrives first, with some big bags of chips with familiar logos written in Arabic. Richie and Mike gush a little over the Bugles—or _Byugalz_—because the Arabic letter Z at the end is stylized to look like a Bugle itself. The three of them take turns chucking Bugles at each other and trying to catch them in their mouths. Richie gets crumbs all over his face and glasses.

By the time Ben and Eddie show up, Richie has almost entirely forgotten about _the picture_, wrapped up in the familiar pre-party thrill. When Mike lets them in, Richie leans out the bathroom door. Eddie’s wearing a soft salmon sweater, a white collar peeking out, and dark cuffed jeans, and Richie nearly lets out a very undignified sound instead of a hello.

“E-Eds,” he coughs, recovering quickly. He puts on a grin. “_Ma sha allah_! I’m surprised a party pooper like you is even here.”

“Keep it up, asshole, and I won’t be for long,” Eddie retorts.

Richie laughs and returns to the bathroom mirror, busying himself with brushing the Bugle crumbs out of his unruly hair. “Make yourselves at home,” he calls. “I’m trying to look presentable for Bill and Stan. You only get one chance to make a second impression.” Eddie frowns at him in the mirror as he passes.

Bill and Stan arrive a few minutes later, carrying two heavy-looking plastic bags. Mike offers to help, but Bill just waves him away. “N-no worries,” he says, smiling. “We just have a little a-announcement to kick off the s-s-semester, and then we can all let our h-huh-hair down.”

Everyone else is already sitting on Mike and Richie’s beds, so Richie joins them, eager to hear what Bill has to say. He takes a seat next to Eddie and leans back on his hands.

“Stan and I got everyone a little welcome p-present.” Bill sets down the plastic bags on the desk. He fishes out two silver tallboys, one with a black band around the top and the other red. “Petra b-buh-beer, your initiation into drinking in Jordan,” he announces proudly, handing the red one to Mike.

Mike takes a look at the can and his jaw drops open. “This is ten percent!”

“Lemme see.” Bev immediately takes the can from Mike, studying it for herself. After a second, she pops the can with a little whoop and takes a big swig. “Oh, and it definitely tastes like it, too, _yikes_!” she says, making a face, but she takes another swig right away.

Bill laughs, clearly pleased. “Number one rule for s-study abroad in Jordan— Well…” He seems to reconsider, passing a black can to Ben. “…The number wuh_-one_ rule is don’t take anything too s-seriously because shit is going to get fucking _weird_ no matter what you d-do. But the number, let’s say, one-point-five r-rule is _drink_ _efficient_. Booze in Jordan ain’t ch-cheap. And at two JD each, Petra’s about as efficient as you can guh-get.” He starts handing out cans to everyone else. “The red ones are t-ten percent; the b-black ones are only eight.”

“_Only_,” Eddie mutters. “Only eight percent _poison_.”

“Lighten up, Eds,” Richie says teasingly. “You’re way more than eight percent through your lifetime. You’ve basically earned it.”

“That makes no fucking sense, and that’s not my fucking name.” But to Richie’s surprise, he takes a beer when Bill offers him one.

“I got enough for everyone to have at luh-least one. Plus an Amstel for S-Stan, who has a more refined p-palate,” Bill says, handing a green bottle to Stan, who accepts it stoically. Bill pops the lid on his own red can and holds it aloft. Richie, Eddie, and the rest of the new kids do the same.

“To q-questioning your life decisions,” Bill toasts with a grin.

Stan raises his bottle, too. “Welcome to Jordan, losers.”

“Ayyyy!” Richie and Bev call together. They clink cans all around.

Richie takes a big swig of his beer. It’s bitter as hell, like a grosser Natty Light, but still somehow not nearly as bad as you would expect for a ten-percent beer that cost roughly three dollars. He catches Eddie shudder at the taste and smothers a grin.

“Let’s put on some fuckin’ _tunes_,” Richie croaks as soon as the can leaves his lips, leaning over to grab his laptop.

“_Yes_, I gotta peep your shit.” Bev throws an arm around him, checking out his iTunes library over his shoulder. ”Let’s see if your taste in music is as bad as your taste in clothes, Tozier.”

“Ten_ thousand _songs?” Eddie’s suddenly on Richie’s other side, gawking at his laptop screen. “It says thirty-four days’ worth of music. Who could ever need that much?”

“It’s actually one big sex playlist, Eds. That’s how long it takes for me to get your mom off.”

“Shut the fuck up, asshole! And don’t call me Eds, Jesus _Christ_, how many times…”

While Richie’s laughing, Bev scoops the laptop away from him and goes to sit next to Ben on Mike’s bed. Ben turns a little red and brings his beer to his mouth, glancing at Bev furtively as he sips.

“Let’s see, let’s see,” she mutters, peering at the screen. “We got Gaga, some Kid Cudi, Jay Z, MGMT… the Avett Brothers? Linkin Park? _Kelly Clarkson_? What the hell is your taste, Tozier?”

“Literally whatever’s on the Pirate Bay,” Richie says, shrugging. “I only acquire music in bulk. Don’t bother trying to find any coherent theme, you won’t.”

“So your taste in music _is _like your taste in clothes,” Stan deadpans, leaning against the far wall.

They all laugh at that, Richie most of all, nearly falling over into Eddie, who shoves him away with a huff. “Stan the Man gets off a good a one!” he exclaims, raising his can in Stan’s direction. Stan simply takes a drink of his beer and gives an almost imperceptible nod back.

“Well, not to worry, Ben and I will DJ tonight,” Bev says, cracking her knuckles like she’s about to spin the turntables herself. “What’s your pleasure, Ben?”

Ben chokes a little on his beer. After he recovers, he points to something on the screen.

“_Great_ choice.” Ben beams back at Bev as she double-clicks.

_Yeah, I’m out that Brooklyn, now I’m down in Tribeca  
Right next to De Niro but I’ll be hood forever…_

As soon as the music comes on, Richie immediately feels more chilled out, like this is a real party, not seven clueless American kids in a hotel room. The day’s earlier anxiety is a distant memory, now; he’s relaxed and comfortable again, even with Eddie sitting next to him on the bed. He balances his beer between his thighs and starts miming the song’s piano parts. The high _plink plink plink, plink, plink, plink plink plink _on the bedspread in front of him and the deeper _dun dun dun_s on Eddie’s legs.

“Hey, quit it.” Eddie shoves his hands away, his voice a little shrill. “I’m not your fucking keyboard.”

Richie grins at him goofily. “Then why is your voice music to my ears, Eddie Spaghetti?”

Eddie nearly chokes on his beer. “What the _fuck_ is _that_ name?”

“Well, you clearly don’t like ‘Eds’, so…” Richie laughs, taking his hand and crooning, “_Sing us a song, you’re the Spaghetti Man_…”

“Shut your fucking mouth, Richie, this is the worst one yet, and don’t touch me—”

Eddie tries to get up and shake out of Richie’s grasp but then it’s the chorus and Richie and Bev both have the same idea at the same time, Bev clutching at Eddie’s other arm as they both sing up at him:

_“In Newww Yoooorrkk! Concrete jungle where dreams are maaade of—”_

Eddie is frozen in shock, staring down at their hands on him in disbelief. “We’re not even fucking _in_ _America_!” he finally protests, shaking them off and scurrying over to Stan, who is still sipping his beer and taking it all in.

After Eddie escapes, Richie and Bev grab each other by the forearms instead, leaning across the gap between the beds and belting out the Alicia Keys part into each other’s faces. Ben’s singing quietly next to Bev, and after a second, Richie feels a hand on his shoulder and it’s Mike, his voice shockingly beautiful. Richie throws an arm around Mike’s waist, and in another second Bill’s there, too, and his voice is not so beautiful but who cares, and the five of them are practically shouting, _“These streets will make you feel brand new, big lights will inspiiire youuu,” _and Richie looks over and sees even Stan is mouthing the words and Eddie’s horrified face is still hilarious. Richie thinks that he can’t wait to spend a semester with these losers.

After the first chorus, they break apart, laughing. It becomes clear that no one except Bill, somehow, knows all the lyrics to the rap part, and Richie notices with interest that he doesn’t stutter at all. Bev declares she’s going to queue up a quick playlist and is taking requests.

“All I ask is Queen, lady’s choice on the song,” Richie says, taking a big swig of his beer and standing up. “And you better save that playlist, Marsh. I wanna know what we’re working with this semester.”

She puts two fingers to her brow and gives him a small salute. Bill sits down on her other side, close to her, and Richie has to stifle a laugh as he requests Kanye’s “Gold Digger”.

Richie joins Eddie and Stan, leaning his shoulder into the wall next to Stan, who looks at him sideways. “Couldn’t help but notice you were lip-syncing to Alicia along with us, Stanley,” he says with a grin. “I knew I got a diva vibe from you.”

Stan takes a sip of his Amstel impassively. “It must be my flamboyant personality.”

Richie cracks up, slapping his thigh. “The deadpan _delivery_, though,” he exclaims. He reaches over and tugs on Eddie’s sleeve. “Do you hear this guy’s delivery, Eddie? I can’t get over it.”

Eddie jerks his arm out of Richie’s grasp. “I told you not to touch me, Richie,” he growls, his eyes stormy as he glances between Richie and Stan. He stalks away, joining Ben near the bathroom.

Richie stares after him, stricken. Eddie doesn’t look back; he just engages Ben in what appears to be very tense conversation, his eyebrows deeply furrowed. Richie feels dread creeping into his stomach again.

He turns back to Stan. He wants to make a joke, but none come to him. “Do you think I should go ask him if he’s mad at me?” he asks helplessly.

Stan pauses, mid-sip, and pulls the bottle from his lips. His serious eyes sweep over Richie’s face, taking in his expression. “I don’t know either of you very well,” he says slowly, “but isn’t this just your schtick, or whatever? You tease him and he gets fake-mad?”

“Yeah, but… he seemed like he might be _real_-mad that time.”

Stan’s eyes haven’t left his face. They are calculating, but not cold. More like… understanding. Finally, he asks, “Well, do you think he’s the kind of person who wants to be talked to right away or given time to calm down?”

Richie hesitates. “I honestly don’t know,” he sighs, feeling powerless. “What do you think?”

Stan looks straight-faced back at him. “I have literally zero insight into that. I _just_ met you.”

Richie chuckles, his shoulders relaxing. “Fair. Thanks for the advice anyway, Stanley Whatever-Your-Last-Name-Is,” he says, patting Stan on the arm. “What _is_ your last name?”

“Uris.”

“Jesus. That’s no good, is it?”

“I assume you mean because it sounds vaguely like ‘urine’, and if so, I need you to know that you are not clever or original.”

Richie strokes his chin thoughtfully. “Your tone is telling me that you wouldn’t find any jokes to that effect funny, but I think I could change your mind.”

Stan blinks back at him, his lips pursed in a total lack of amusement.

“Sure I couldn’t interest you in _one_ urine-based pun?”

Stan’s face remains unchanged. He takes a sip of his beer, fixing Richie with his cool gaze.

“I feel like I’m sensing some interest—”

“_No_. You absolute Neanderthal.”

“‘Kay, cool, cool.” Richie sips his beer, nodding. He lets Stan relax. “So how are you enjoying the party, Stanley Ur-piss?”

Stan pushes himself off the wall and brushes straight past Richie to join Eddie and Ben.

“I bet you weren’t expecting me to put the urine in _that_ way, though, were you?” Richie calls after him. “Bet that was a new one!”

He hears someone chuckling behind him and turns around. Bill is getting himself another beer out of the bag, smiling. “Making e-e-enemies?” he asks lightly.

Richie shrugs, grinning. “Nah, Stan loves me, I can tell. Almost as much as Eddie does,” he adds, a little self-consciously. Bill offers him another beer, and he takes it. “Thanks, roomie.”

Bill raises his eyebrows in recognition. “Ah, yeah, I f-forgot we’re gonna be roommates. Now, no offense, but I’m t-terrible with names, so… R-Richie, right?”

“Yes, sah!” Richie snaps his heels together and salutes. “Richie Tozier, at your sah-vice, Billiam, old chap!”

Bill laughs almost certainly out of pure confusion at Richie’s fake accent, but Richie’ll take it; that’s how he gets a lot of his laughs, anyway. Bill clinks his beer can against Richie’s with a smile. They both drink. “Well, good to know ya, R-Richie. I assume you taking your second Puh-Petra in an hour means you’re chuh-chill if I d-drink on the odd occasion, too.”

“As long as you share, Big Bill.”

Bill holds out his arms in a welcoming gesture. “_Ahlan wa sahlan_, man. Just happy to have a r-roommate I won’t horrify with my Juh-Jordan-induced alcoholism.” His face turns a little serious. “Although I think it’s only r-right of me to warn you that my roommate last semester c-cuh-complained and requested a m-move.”

Richie snorts. He finds it hard to believe this soft-spoken guy could get up to anything worthy of official complaint, at least as far as Richie’s concerned. “No worries, dude. I’m kind of hard to rattle. As long as I don’t wake up to you pissing on my laptop, we’re good.”

Bill laughs, seeming relieved. The two of them drink for a minute in comfortable silence, taking in the rest of the crew. Richie’s eyes fall on Eddie, who is talking animatedly to Ben and Stan near the entryway. His cheeks are flushed, and he’s gesturing a little wildly with his beer can, which Ben keeps flinching back from as it sloshes. Richie thinks he catches the words, _no seatbelts!_, the absolute nerd. His chest feels warm, and then turns abruptly cold when he remembers Eddie snapping at him earlier.

“So, uh, you and Kaspbrak know each other?” Richie asks, tilting his head in that direction.

Bill nods, taking a swig of his beer. “Yep, same Arabic class since freshman year.”

“Wow, really?”

“Well, there’s only like e-eight of us taking Arabic at our school. Not hard to be in the same c-class when there’s only one.” Bill smiles.

“You ever hang out outside of class?”

“With E-Eddie? Nah.” Bill shakes his head. “I like him in class, but he’s a guh-_good kid_, you know? Always does the homework. Fucking g-great at Arabic. Teacher loves him. I don’t think I’ve ever even seen him drink until t-tonight, actually. He always seemed a little high-strung.”

“High-strung? Our fair Eddie Spaghetti?” Richie clutches a hand to his chest in mock outrage. “Thou wrongest the boy, you cad! For that thou shalt suffer the stocks!”

Bill looks at Richie with bemusement but seems to be getting used to him. Better sooner than later, Richie thinks.

“To be honest, I was s-surprised when I heard he was coming. I think he grew up kinda sh-sheltered,” Bill continues. “Plus he’s got that girlfriend.”

Richie feels like he’s stumbling, or maybe the room is spinning. _Girlfriend? He never said anything about a…_ He looks at Eddie across the room and thinks about him snarling at Richie not to touch him. He suddenly feels sick.

He knocks back a big gulp of beer; a little spills around his mouth and down his neck. Maybe eight percent was a mistake after all. He wonders if there are any tens left. Bill is still talking, but Richie interrupts him, spluttering. “G-girlfriend?”

Bill stops. “Yeah,” he says after a moment, “but I hear she suh-sucks.”

Belatedly, Richie laughs, a little high. “Well, Eddie kinda sucks, too, so…” He sticks his nose in his beer again, looking away.

Bill is silent for a long time. He glances over at Eddie and back at Richie. “Well,” he says slowly, “who knows what’s happening with them? Lots of things can chuh-change in a semester. Especially one that brings Eddie K-Kaspbrak to Jordan.” He turns back to Richie and taps his beer against his with a grin.

Richie sucks his cheek between his teeth, frowning, but slowly lets his lips quirk up as they both sip their beers in tandem. He silently thanks whatever study abroad gods there may be. There are definitely worse roommates to have than Bill Denbrough.

He looks back across the room at Eddie, who’s holding his beer right up close to his face as he listens to whatever Stan’s saying, frowning slightly and nodding fast. He looks so stupid adorable, it hurts.

Just then the song changes. It’s a cheesy, cheap-sounding beat that Richie recognizes right away, and it’s exactly what he desperately needs.

A distraction.

“Ohhh, _shit_!” he exclaims, a little hoarse, setting down his beer. “Who’s my new best friend who requested _this _club banger!?”

Mike stands up, laughing and setting his own beer down on the bedside table. “That would be me. Saw it on your iTunes and couldn’t resist. Let’s see what you got, Tozier.” He’s already rolling his shoulders to the beat.

“All right, everyone,” Richie announces, motioning for them to clear a space for him and Mike. “Me and Mikey are gonna take all you motherfuckers to _school_! And you better pay attention because this _will _be on the final!”

He looks around the room and in the seconds before the chorus hits, he sees all eyes on him and Mike—Bill grinning with a beer in his hand, Ben looking cautiously amused, Stan seeming preemptively annoyed, Bev already giggling, and last of all Eddie, looking flushed and almost dazzled from the booze and the energy and so fucking gorgeous in that split-second that Richie feels a pang in his chest and then a rush of adrenaline above and beyond the high he always gets from being the life of the party—but there’s no time to dwell on the feeling, it’s time to fucking _bring it_ because it’s the first chorus and—

_Bitch I’m wild! (Hold up!)  
Do the Stanky Legg (ayy!), do the Stanky Legg (ayy!)  
Do the Stanky Legg (ayy!) when I hit the dance floor  
I be doin’ the Stanky Legg—_

Bev’s rolling back on the bed and shrieking with laughter as Richie and Mike do what can only be the eponymous Stanky Legg, each sticking out one leg like it’s utterly broken as they lunge down on the other, clapping and swinging their arms roughly to the beat. Mike is way more coordinated than Richie, but Richie knows he makes up for his lack of skill with sheer comic ridiculousness, his lanky-ass limbs stretching and waving around all over the place—and they’re both half-drunk and laughing so hard as they do it that they’re practically falling over each other anyway, which is making them laugh even harder.

Richie and Mike don’t even make it through the first chorus before Bev jumps up there with them, having picked up the _extremely_ sophisticated steps after just a few bars. “C’mon, Bill, get in here!” she calls, waving her arms wildly at him.

Bill looks surprised and vaguely flattered, and with a shrug at Stan, whose expression can only be described as _deeply disturbed_, joins the three of them. Bev laughs in delight as Bill claps and lunges down, doing a perfect Stanky Legg, as though all he was waiting for was an invitation.

“Fuck yeah, Bill, you got some _moves_, dude!” Mike exclaims, bumping him with his hip.

“All right, you Puritans,” Richie shouts over to Eddie, Ben, and Stan. “This is the verse where they tell you how to do the dance—”

“‘_Dance_’?” Stan repeats incredulously.

“—so you better listen the fuck up! Here we go!” And Richie and Mike and—confirming Richie’s suspicions—Bill, too, all chant:

_Now you can lean wit it, and you can drop wit it _  
_You can switch to the other leg and you can stop wit it_  
_Now get it, get it, now get it…_

“Get it, guys!” Bev sings out.

Ben’s the first to break. He sighs, sets down his beer with a sheepish smile at Stan and Eddie, and starts lightly bopping his head from side to side as he dances over to the group.

“_Yes_, Ben, now _get_ it!” Bev shouts with glee. She clasps their hands together and holds them above their heads as she leads him in the dance. Ben’s face flushes immediately as he self-consciously tries to mimic her.

Only Stan and Eddie remain, and they both look painfully aware of it as Richie turns back to them. And Richie _wishes_ he could stop himself from wanting to tug Eddie onto the dance floor with him, he really does, but there’s something about how Eddie looks right now—a little pink from the beer, a little horrified by Richie’s dancing, and, above all, a little amused despite himself—that means Richie can’t help it. He has to try. He has to, because…

Because if he gets Eddie to do this dumbass dance with him, maybe that means that everything is going to be okay.

“All riiight…” Richie holds out his hands and pulls his fingers back in a _come on_ gesture. “Go on, get wit it, losers!”

“I fail to see how _we’re _the losers in this situation,” Stan retorts, his eyes sweeping over the five Stanky Leggers.

“Aw, c’mon, Stan,” Bill calls from the makeshift dance pit, where he’s bumping up against both Bev and Mike, “we’re all l-luh-losers here!”

Somehow, that seems mollify Stan; his expression softens, although he looks no closer to joining.

Eddie, on the other hand… Richie notices Eddie’s eyes are flicking among Richie and Stan and the others, like maybe he’s trying to study exactly how to do it before he tries it himself. Like maybe he just needs one more little push before he’ll join.

“I understand if you’re intimidated by my moves, Eds,” Richie says teasingly. “I’d be scared to try, too.”

“I’m not fucking _scared_, you jackass,” Eddie bites back, crossing his arms. “You look moronic.”

Richie laughs and shrugs, still dancing. “Okay, then. But I guess that means I was right earlier.” Eddie narrows his eyes at him, and Richie grins. “I knew you were a party pooper.”

And if it weren’t for the nearly finished ten-percent Petra in Eddie’s hands, Richie doesn’t think that would have worked.

But it does.

Eddie’s face turns bright red, his brown eyes flashing as he takes a deep breath, seeming to steel himself. He throws back the rest of his beer in one jerky motion, crumples the can in his hand, and whips it at the trashcan in the corner, which he misses by at least three feet. He throws himself down into a lunge in time to catch the second chorus—_when I hit the dance floor I be doin’ the Stanky Legg (ayy!)_—and starts twisting his outstretched leg angrily, his dark eyebrows deeply furrowed, as he grits out, “You don’t know _shit_, Richie. You know _fucking nothing_!”

Stan is shaking his head in disbelief, and the others are cheering for Eddie, and Richie starts laughing so hard his non-stanky leg gives out on him and he falls on his ass, almost crying as this little ball of fucking fire and stress and rage proves to Richie and the others and himself that he’s _not_ a party pooper and he’s not scared to look like a total dumbass, at least not with a tallboy of too-strong beer in him.

It all makes Richie’s heart swell like a balloon into his throat, so that he doesn’t even bother to get off his ass and just watches Eddie, mouth still agape and smiling dumbly, until the chorus ends and Eddie stops dancing and rolls his eyes and calls Richie a doofus and a moron and a fucking idiot and reaches a hand out to haul him back up onto his feet, and then laughs up into his face when Richie is still speechless, feeling Eddie’s warm hand in his and looking down at Eddie’s starry, crinkled-up eyes, and wanting so badly to kiss Eddie’s upturned mouth that it makes him queasy.

_…Plus he’s got that girlfriend…_

Abruptly, Richie drops Eddie’s hand and wrenches himself away, heart pounding. He gulps, needing air. “Hey, Bev, wanna smoke?” he blurts out, his voice breaking. His tone is almost desperate.

Bev looks startled, faltering in her dancing as she stands up straight. “Uh, sure, _akhi_,” she says, recovering quickly. “Ben, I’m leaving you in charge of music, all right?” She makes the _I’m watching you _gesture with two fingers and Ben gives her a thumbs up. Richie tugs her out of the room, ignoring the look of confusion on Eddie’s face as they brush past him.

They don’t speak as Bev shows him into her hotel room and opens the window. There’s no balcony but the sill is wide enough for both of them to sit on if Bev scrunches her legs up and Richie lets one of his dangle into the room. They can still faintly hear the music and laughter through the wall.

“I only have one cig left,” Bev says, tapping the pack on her hand. “Hope you’re cool with my germs.”

“You kidding? I _hope_ I catch whatever you’ve got, _ukhti_.”

She smirks as she lights a cigarette, takes a drag, and passes it over to Richie. “You wanna talk about it?”

Richie shrugs, sucking in smoke. “Nothing to talk about.”

“’Kay.”

They sit in silence for a long time, passing the cigarette back and forth and listening to the party in the next room and the traffic down below.

When the cigarette is almost out, Bev gives a lopsided smile. “I like everyone a lot,” she says earnestly.

“And everyone likes you.”

“Everyone likes you, too.”

He looks out the window. “Sure.”

“Hey.” Bev nudges his shin with her toe, so he looks back at her. “They do. It seems like you’re doubting it all of the sudden, but they do.”

“Well…” Richie drags a hand through his hair. “Maybe they wouldn’t if they knew how I felt about them.”

“What makes you say that?”

He sighs, considering the stub in his hand. Finally, he asks, his voice little more than a whisper: “Didn’t you see the picture?”

Bev frowns. “What picture?”

“The last one, from the scavenger hunt. Of me and Eddie.”

“The one where you looked kinda disoriented?”

“You don’t have to do that,” he says, frustrated.

“Do _what_?” she asks, matching his tone.

He sighs again and leans his head back against the window frame, closing his eyes. “Pretend like I didn’t look head over fucking heels for him.”

Bev is quiet. When he cracks an eye open, she’s looking at him softly, with understanding. He feels his eyes prickling at her expression and closes them again.

“_Are_ you?”

He doesn’t move. “Maybe a little.”

“Yeah. Just a little.” He can hear the slight smile in her voice, and he sees it on her face when he opens his eyes again. He realizes she thinks it’s _cute_, a _possibility_—that somehow it could work out between him and Eddie. She doesn’t know.

“He has a girlfriend,” he says bluntly. “Bill told me.”

The smile falls from her face, replaced with a frown. After a moment, she chuckles. “And here I thought he was jealous of you flirting with Stan.”

He snorts. “Well. Looks like you misread the room.”

“Yeah, my bad.” She finally takes the last of the cigarette from him and stubs it out on the stone sill. “Well, what are you gonna do?”

Richie turns his hands up helplessly. “Get over it, I guess,” he says. “It just sucks. If I’d known from the beginning, maybe I wouldn’t have—” He cuts himself off, exhaling in frustration. “I mean, what the hell am I supposed to do, Bev? He’s like _exactly_ my type. I didn’t even know I _had _a type, but somehow he’s _it_. Big brown eyes, all cute and short…”

“And mean.”

He laughs in earnest this time, covering his face with a hand. “Yeah, real fucking mean. I love it. I don’t know what that says about me.”

Bev takes his other hand, rubbing it between both of hers. “Well, for what it’s worth, I do think you are, like, special to him, or something,” she says meaningfully. “Like I _know _he wouldn’t have done the Stanky Legg for anyone else.”

“He just wanted to prove me wrong.”

“Yeah, exactly. He just wanted to prove _you_ wrong. Because you _matter_.” She grins. “And to be honest, I think he also wanted to prove he was at least more fun than Stan.”

Richie laughs. “Everyone is more fun than Stan. That’s what makes Stan so fun.”

She laughs, too, and then stands up. “All right, come on. I think I just heard your Queen song come on, and I chose this one special for you.”

Richie cocks his head, catching the opening strains of “Don’t Stop Me Now.” He sighs. “Ugh, if it were any other song, I think I could resist, but…”

She grins. “Somehow I knew you would need it, _akhi_,” she says tenderly, holding out a hand.

Bev pulls him back into the room just as the music is picking up, and Mike, Bill, and Ben raise their cans when they reenter, greeting them joyfully, their smiles so clearly genuine that Richie feels truly heartened.

He boogies over to them—_like a shooting star leaping through the sky, like a tiger—_and they all dance and sing along as the song rollicks on, and Richie lets himself feel the music and Freddie Mercury’s exuberant voice and forget about Eddie and his brown eyes and his girlfriend. He shimmies his shoulders and shakes his hips in time, he takes Mike’s hands and pumps their arms back and forth and cries that he wants to _make a supersonic man_ out of him, out of all of them. Richie dips Ben and Richie dips Bill and _Bev _dips Bill and Mike gets them all do-si-do-ing, hooking their elbows through, and Richie spins Bev until she gets dizzy and spins him back so hard that he crashes into Mike, and they both fall onto the bed, laughing. Richie rolls off the bed backwards, ass over head, and ends up in a heap on the floor.

When he glances up, he realizes he’s at Eddie’s feet, and Eddie is looking down at him, cheeks pink and one eyebrow raised.

“Nice moves, dipshit,” he says. “You almost kicked me in the face.”

Richie ducks his head and laughs into his shoulder before looking up again. “’Cause I’m having a such good time,” he explains in time with the song, pushing his hair out of his face. He pulls himself up by the bedsheets, breathing hard from dancing and falling and laughing, until he’s looking down at Eddie and, grinning and breathless and still feeling the music, he half-sings: “If you wanna have a good time, just give me a call.”

Eddie’s mouth opens, like he’s going to respond, but no sound comes out. Instead, his face turns even redder, and his eyes go glassy. He looks like he’s going to be sick.

“You all right, Eds?” Richie asks, concerned. He reaches out a hand but stops himself, remembering. “How many beers have you had? You need to vom?”

Eddie nods quickly and puts a hand over his mouth, shoving past Richie.

“Feel free to wreck our bathroom, if you can’t make it to yours,” Richie calls after him.

Eddie doesn’t turn around as he pushes his way through the room, making his way for the front door.

Still worried, Richie cups a hand around his mouth. “Need me to hold your hair back?”

Eddie’s only response, just before he disappears out the door, is to give Richie the middle finger over his shoulder. Richie barks out a loud, uncertain laugh and stands still, awkward and alone, the laugh echoing harshly in his ears long after the song fades and the door has closed behind Eddie.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the title is from “i’ve got it all (most)” by modest mouse. other songs mentioned were “empire state of mind” by jay-z (again—it was pretty hot in early 2010 y’all), “don’t stop me now” by queen, and, of course, [“stanky legg” by gs boys](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewufRwrayTI). sorry to everyone who thought they could forget (or avoid ever learning) about that song.
> 
> [here’s](https://www.amazon.com/funny-guy-mugs-hawaiian-button/dp/b07cl5lgvz/ref=pd_sbs_193_img_1/132-2613233-4885349?_encoding=utf8&pd_rd_i=b06zy2p4pz&pd_rd_r=747b5047-89d4-4ee2-9c6d-22d97a028b20&pd_rd_w=aotiy&pd_rd_wg=g9veu&pf_rd_p=5cfcfe89-300f-47d2-b1ad-a4e27203a02a&pf_rd_r=xczy80nzpmyxaqpayfg3&refrid=xczy80nzpmyxaqpayfg3&th=1) the shirt richie wears at the party. i imagine he often wears a lavender t-shirt underneath for some semi-subtle bi pride but with the day he’d had he wasn’t into broadcasting that too much.
> 
> also i am definitely a walk-up-the-escalator person, like eddie, but i think richie would be a stander haha.  
thanks again to @jajs, who should be starting her cross-country drive today. i hope we get to do some of our own bad dancing when she gets here! <3
> 
> next time: richie and eddie make a discovery at breakfast! eddie tries to take a stand against piracy! richie learns that eddie has a secret crush!
> 
> arabic glossary:  
_ahlan_: hello, hi; welcome  
_ahlan fiik_: hello [response to _ahlan_]  
_ahlan wa sahlan_: welcome  
_akhi_: my brother  
_habibi_: my dear  
_ma sha allah_: lit., god has willed it [said when expressing appreciation, joy, praise, usually as an exclamation]  
_shukran_: thank you  
_ukhti_: my sister  
_yalla_: hurry up, let’s go
> 
> also, if anyone was curious: _al-quds_ is the arabic name for jerusalem, and daret al-funoun is an art gallery that has a killer view. maybe someday they'll go back.


	5. january v: oh baby you, you got what i need / but you say he’s just a friend

The next morning, Richie wakes up earlier than he expected. He doesn’t have a headache, but he does have a kind of all-over _crinkly_ feeling that tells him he’ll get one soon enough if he doesn’t get some food and painkillers in him. Still, he lies in bed staring up at the ceiling, one arm across his face, willing himself to go back to sleep, because it’s better than being awake and feeling as uneasy as he currently does.

Eddie never came back to the party last night. Richie tried to enjoy himself, chatting with Bill and Stan and Ben and dancing with Bev and Mike, but his thoughts kept drifting anxiously back to Eddie. Finally, he mentioned ever-so-casually to Ben that he hoped Eddie wasn’t puking his guts out all over their room, and Ben said he would check on him. When he got back, he told Richie the room was dark and Eddie was in bed. Richie made some joke about Eddie being an old man and it being past his bedtime and then tried to get a mosh pit going to “Party in the U.S.A.”, but not even Miley’s evocative narrative storytelling could fully distract him.

Like, he was relieved that Eddie wasn’t being like actively sick, he guessed, but if that was the case, maybe it meant he left for another reason. And he _did_ leave right in the middle of Richie like, kind of flirting with him. Okay, _definitely_ flirting with him. Singing along to Freddie Mercury but really-kind-of-actually singing to a specific person is like some of the most obvious bisexual flirting there is. And Richie, drunk on Freddie (and Eddie and, you know, ten-percent beer, _thanks Bill_), flirted with Eddie right after he had found out about Eddie’s girlfriend and Eddie had told him specifically _not to fucking touch him_. Richie presses his arm tighter across his eyes, groaning internally.

So, he can’t shake the feeling that something is very wrong. That he and Eddie are _not okay_. And it would be worth it to skip the food and painkillers and almost certainly wake up two hours later with a splitting headache if he got to spend those extra hours not having to think about how he may have fucked up the possibility of even just being friends with Eddie, when that’s something he really does want, especially given that it’s really his only choice at this point.

Richie sighs, shifting his arm off his face. He’s too wired to go back to sleep, he knows it. Plus, he really has to piss. So he reluctantly slides out from under the covers and pulls on his sweatpants. He empties his very full bladder in the toilet and afterwards splashes some water in his face and meets his reflection in the mirror grimly. He looks fucking _gaunt. _Like a Tim Burton character.

“_And I, Jack, the Pumpkin Bitch_,” he sings quietly, trying to comb his tangled hair with his fingers, “_have grown so tired of my same old shit_.”

When he gets out of the bathroom, Mike is still passed out, starfished face-down on his bed, so Richie grabs some ibuprofen and slips away without him.

He yawns his way through the elevator ride, stretching his lanky arms high above him, but the headrush from it just makes him dizzy, not relaxed. He catches himself on the elevator wall when he feels like he’s falling and squeezes his eyes shut. And he’s supposed to meet his host family for the first time today. What a fucking mess.

The only saving grace is that it’s so early there’s almost no one in the hallway or the lobby. When Richie gets down to the breakfast area, though, he freezes. Only one other person is down there at this time, slowly peeling an orange, an untouched bowl of unadorned oatmeal in front of him.

Eddie.

Of course.

Richie gulps.

Before Richie can decide whether he wants to turn around and disappear back upstairs, come hell or hangover, Eddie looks up. Eddie’s eyes are bleary, but a trapped expression passes through them when they lock with Richie’s. It makes Richie want to run away even more.

But he doesn’t. He just nods stiffly in recognition before going to the buffet to fill a plate. He lingers by the counter, pouring himself a big mug of coffee and giving himself time to chill out.

_It’s actually an opportunity for a mature conversation, if you think about it_, he tries to tell himself. _You’re not alone together all that often. You can ask what you did to make him mad. You can just issue a blanket statement of apology. You can check in and ask if you’re still even, like, friends._

He gathers up his plate and coffee, takes a deep breath, turns around— and promptly turns back around and sets it all down again with a clatter, heart pounding. To be honest, he half-expected Eddie to be gone by the time he got back to the table, but he’s still there, slouched in his chair and now just staring at the naked orange, sitting in its unfurled peel on his plate.

Richie rubs a hand over his face, sighing. “Mature conversation? Who are you fucking kidding, Tozier?” he mutters. “Deflect and hope for the best.”

He girds his loins again and this time he makes it back to the table. His chair scrapes on the tile as he takes a seat. “Morning,” he says, nonchalant.

“_Sabah al-kheir_,” Eddie responds dully, still staring at the orange. His voice is husky, dry.

Richie huffs out a laugh, shaking his head. “Ah, fuck you,” he says good-naturedly. “Your pronunciation is on point even when you’re hungover.”

“I’m not hungover,” Eddie retorts. He doesn’t meet Richie’s eyes. “I wasn’t even drunk last night. Unlike some people.”

_Oof. _A wave of uneasiness washes over Richie. “Well, you gotta forgive Stan,” he jokes lamely. “He’s like a wild animal when that devil-water gets in ’im.”

It’s apparently the wrong thing to say. Eddie’s eyes narrow, his mouth going tight. He starts tearing the peel into tiny pieces, silent.

Richie sips at his coffee, listening to the quiet Muzak playing in the breakfast area. He supposes it should calm him down, but it just sets his nerves on edge.

_So just ask a normal fucking question_, he thinks, palms sweating. _Don’t joke, just ask him what’s wrong._

“So if you weren’t drunk, why’d you hightail outta there like your wig was on fire?”

_So close._

Eddie twitches, frowning. “Fuck you, I did not,” he mutters. His face is turning a little red, and his eyebrows are deeply furrowed. “I just felt sick all of a sudden.”

“Gotcha, gotcha.” Richie nods like he totally gets it, even though he totally does _not_. “Well, you didn’t miss much. You really took the party with you when you left, man.”

Eddie scoffs. “Yeah fucking right. You didn’t need me there to have a good time.”

“Sure we did, Eds. It wasn’t the same without you angry-dancing to bad music,” Richie says, sipping his coffee. “Mr. Not-Even-Drunk.”

Eddie really does go red at that. “Whatever,” he grumbles, tearing at the orange peel. He glances at Richie. “How long did you all hang out after I left?”

Richie shrugs. “Not too long. Stan left pretty soon after you to get back to his host family, actually.”

“Really.” Eddie’s tone is even, without the cadence of a question. “I’m surprised, I thought he would have stayed.”

“Where would he have slept? Stan doesn’t strike me as the type to pass out on the floor.”

“I guess I didn’t think he would sleep on the floor.”

Richie frowns, truly bewildered. “Where else would he sleep? The bathtub?”

Eddie looks at him sideways and then back to his hands on the table, chewing his lip. “Never mind,” he says, shaking his head and sitting up straight. “I don’t really know _what_ I was thinking.” And his tone seems a little lighter. He picks up the orange and breaks a wedge off, popping it into his mouth. Richie smells fresh citrus, and that—plus Eddie’s seeming change in mood—settles his anxious stomach a little.

“So, are you feeling all right now?”

Eddie’s chewing slows. He eyes Richie. “What do you mean?”

“You said you felt sick.”

“Oh.” He nods. “Yeah, I feel fine this morning.”

“Did you hurl?”

“_No_, thank god, I fucking hate vomiting.” He shudders. “I just needed some fresh air and then I felt better.”

“You shoulda come back to the party, then,” Richie says. “We could’ve put on ‘The Macarena’ if that’s more your dance style.”

Eddie shoots him a glare, but it has none of the earlier bite. It makes Richie smile.

“So, not ‘The Macarena’…” Richie strokes his chin thoughtfully. “What about ‘The Cha Cha Slide’?”

Eddie rolls his eyes.

Richie snaps his fingers. “I’ve got it,” he says, grinning. “‘The Loco-Motion’. Holy fuck, I’d give my left nut to see you angry-dance to ‘The Loco-Motion’, Eds.”

Eddie shakes his head and sighs, but the corners of his mouth twitch as he pops another orange wedge into his mouth. “Don’t call me Eds,” he says around it, muffled.

Richie furrows his brow and grits his teeth. “_Everybody’s doing a fucking brand-new dance now_,” he growls. “_I know you’ll get to like it if you fucking give it a chance NOW._”

Laughter bursts out of Eddie’s mouth, clearly taking him by surprise. He ducks his head down toward his lap, his eyes crinkling up, before he quickly covers his mouth and shakes his head, getting control of himself. “You’re not fucking funny,” he mutters, wiping at his eyes. “So stupid.”

Richie feels like his smile is splitting his face in two. “Fuck, I can see it so clearly,” he murmurs wistfully, resting his chin in his hand. “I bet if I had put that on and blasted it, you woulda come back and danced.” He puts on the angry face again, chugging his shoulders up and down like Kylie Minogue. “_Fucking swing your hips NOW._”

“Oh, fuck off, man,” Eddie laughs. He shoves at Richie’s shoulder playfully, and Richie’s stomach flip-flops at the contact. Eddie touching him feels like forgiveness.

“Now I want to record a death metal version of ‘The Loco-Motion’,” says Richie, beaming. “I think it could go viral.”

“Dumbass.” Eddie pops another orange wedge in his mouth. Feeling bold, Richie darts a hand out to grab one himself, and Eddie jerks the remaining orange away, snapping, “Hands off, I bet you’re filthy.” But he breaks a wedge off and offers it to Richie himself. Richie takes it delicately, smiling and feeling warm.

“I wasn’t gonna come back to the party,” Eddie goes on, his tone light now. “It was late by then, and we spent the day running—_literally running_—around the city.”

“Tell me about it. I’m already sore,” Richie complains, chewing. “I’m so goddamn outta shape. And you run pretty fucking fast for a guy with asthma.”

Eddie blinks. “How did you know I have asthma?”

Richie shrugs. “You said you keep an inhaler in your fanny pack. Most people without asthma don’t carry inhalers around.”

“Yeah, well—” Eddie seems to cut himself off, and the words hang there. He fiddles with the remains of the orange peel.

“Hey, no shame, man,” Richie says, desperate not to let the conversation falter again. “Even with asthma, you’re clearly in way better shape than I am. I was probably gonna pass out if we didn’t find Daret al-Funoun when we did. You and Haystack woulda had to tie me to the top of the cab like a Christmas tree.” He closes his eyes and lets his neck and jaw go slack, miming unconsciousness. He opens his eyes again and grins, seeing the familiar annoyance returning to Eddie’s face. “Anyway, running around like that would take it outta anyone, especially if you need a lung-sucker. I totally get why you’d want to get to bed early.”

“‘Lung-sucker’,” Eddie mutters, irritated. “You really have to make everything sound fucking gross, huh?”

Richie grins with all his teeth. “Welcome to friendship with Richie Tozier, Eds,” he says. “Inappropriate jokes and physical affection, ahoy.” He takes a sip of his coffee, trying to hide how closely he’s watching Eddie’s reaction.

Eddie rolls his eyes, but Richie detects no real heat. “Yeah, I get the picture,” he mutters. He begins ticking things off on his fingers. “Also stupid fucking dancing, stupid fucking parties, stupid fucking nicknames—”

“Hey, ‘Eddie Spaghetti’ is clever as hell.”

Eddie pinches the bridge of his nose. “Ugh, I was really hoping you would forget about that one,” he groans. “And it’s _not_ clever, it’s _moronic_. All it does is fucking rhyme. A _child_ could come up with it.”

Richie gasps and clutches a hand to his heart, wounded. “And welcome to friendship with Edward Kaspbrak the Third, Richie,” he says to himself, sniffling. “Hope you like being cussed out and berated twenty-four-sev.”

Eddie pauses. “Yeah, well,” he drawls, looking away, “maybe if you didn’t fucking ask for it all the fucking time, I’d be nicer…”

Richie laughs and waves his hand dismissively. “Nah, fuck that,” he says. “A _nice _Eddie Spaghetti? Too weird. It’d be like a dog walking on its hind legs.”

“Fuck you.”

“_There_ he is.” Richie grins. He lifts his mug to his lips again. “Besides, you’re right, I do ask for it all the time. And you give it right back. That’s why you’re my favorite, Eds.”

The words are out of his mouth before he can stop them. His eyes flash to Eddie’s. Eddie’s mouth is slightly open, his face red. After a moment, he snorts in disbelief.

“Excuse me, you have _favorites_?” he sputters, incredulous. “What _is_ this, fucking Myspace?”

Richie laughs, relieved. “Well, I _am _white and nerdy,” he says. “_I got people beggin’ for my Top 8 spaces_.”

Eddie scrunches his face up. “What the fuck is that from?”

Richie blinks. “Uh, the song ‘White & Nerdy’ by Sir Weird Al Yankovic,” he says. “Eddie, are you telling me you’ve never heard the comedy stylings of Weird Al?”

“My mom wouldn’t let me listen to him. She says he’s too crude.”

“She says the same thing about me but she loves it.”

Eddie glares at him. “I can guarantee you she would _not_.”

“_Man_.” Richie leans back in his chair, balancing it on two legs and putting his hands behind his head. “If I’da known you were a Weird Al virgin, Eds, I woulda taken over the playlist from Bev last night. I woulda _made _you come back to the party. Everyone else could get the fuck out, and we’d just listen to ‘Amish Paradise’ on repeat until you could sing it in your sleep.”

Eddie rolls his eyes, but one side of his mouth is quirked up. “I wasn’t gonna come back to the party, all right? You fucking degenerate,” he says lightly. “I really did feel sick. Plus I needed to get up early to Skype, but I fucking slept through that anyway, which I’m never gonna hear the end of…”

Suddenly, Richie’s stomach drops with the realization. His chair slams back down to the floor with a crack, making Eddie jump.

“Jesus, _fuck_, Richie, what the hell—”

“With your girlfriend.”

Eddie’s mouth shuts. His eyes flick over to Richie’s face, which Richie quickly conceals with his coffee mug. He nods, frowning. “Yeah. How’d you—”

“Bill mentioned her,” Richie says, attempting nonchalance. He puts on a lecherous grin. “Said she had tits for days.”

Eddie grimaces. “Shut the fuck up, asshole, no one would say gross shit like that except you,” he bites out. “And don’t use that fucking word, I hate it.”

Richie frowns, confused. “What? ‘Tits’?”

“Yes, stop saying it.”

“Why?”

“It reminds me of, like, cow udders.” He gags. “Fucking disgusting.”

“Well, what should I say instead? ‘Boobies’? Like we’re fucking five?”

“How about you just shut the fuck up about my girlfriend’s breasts in general?”

And Richie shoves his face in his coffee because hearing Eddie say the words “my girlfriend” out loud for the first time kind of makes his stomach churn. Belatedly, he realizes he could have spun his retort into some contrived _your mom_ joke, but the time has passed.

“What’s her name?” he asks. It comes out quieter, more subdued than he wanted it to. _Shoulda made it breezy. Fuck_.

Eddie seems not to notice, though. He’s pulled his bowl of oatmeal in front of him and is picking at it. “Myra.”

“Oh, that sounds—” He searches for anything witty to say about the name _Myra_ but all he can come up with, finally, is: “—old.”

Eddie scoffs. “Yeah, ’cause ‘Richard’ is the fucking hip and happening name of 2010.”

“You’re one to talk, _Edward_.”

Eddie sighs. “Fine, so we both have Baby Boomer names. Whatever.”

“I think we all do, actually,” Richie says, seizing the conversation thread. “Especially ‘Beverly’. The Boomer-est name of all.”

“I dunno, I think ‘Stanley’ is pretty fucking Boomer-y.”

“Which works, because Stan acts like he’s about ready to start filing for Social Security.”

Eddie snorts. “All right, so it’s you, me, Bev, and Stan in the old-person name club.”

“And Myra,” Richie reminds him, trying to say her name like it’s the easiest thing in the world when it tastes like ash on his tongue.

Eddie pauses. “Right, and Myra.”

Richie swallows and pulls his plate toward him. He starts picking at his food, some bread and hummus that still doesn’t feel like breakfast. He tries to eat some, though, knowing coffee and one orange wedge aren’t exactly going to keep the ibuprofen from making him sick to his stomach.

“Hey—”

Richie twitches, his eyes flicking up to Eddie. Eddie looks like the word was punched out of him; he’s glaring down at his oatmeal, his mouth screwed up tight. He takes a deep breath, like he’s gearing himself up to say something he knows is going to be very awkward.

Richie’s heart sinks. He thinks he knows what’s coming.

_Don’t take this the wrong way but are you, like, gay or something? I don’t, like, care if you are, I have gay friends, but like, are you? I just want to know so that like, I don’t ever give you the wrong impression—_

Richie brings up his mug again, his trusty shield, steeling himself. “What’s up, Eds?”

“Don’t call me—” Eddie huffs, irritated. “Whatever. It’s just— Okay, I think I, like—” He pinches the bridge of his nose, eyes closed. Richie’s stomach sinks deeper with every failed attempt at a sentence.

Finally, Eddie takes a deep breath and brings his hand up beside his face. “I snapped at you last night,” he blurts out. “Again. So I just wanted to say I’m sorry. Again.” He punctuates each short sentence with a short, angry chop of his hand and finishes with one final sweep of his hand before lowering it to the table, seemingly satisfied.

“Oh.” The word leaves Richie’s mouth in one relieved breath. He’s so surprised that he doesn’t even know what to say. A smile begins spreading across his face.

Eddie abruptly jabs a finger at Richie, as though cutting him off before he can get a joke in. “And I know I suck at apologies, so don’t even fucking start.”

At that, Richie can’t help but laugh. “Well, the threat at the end certainly kicked this one up a notch.”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“Hm.” Richie cocks his head, teasing. “So when can I expect an apology for you snapping at me _now_?”

Eddie exhales, deeply frustrated. “Fuck you, dude, I’m fucking trying, Jesus Christ—”

“I know, I know, sorry, man, apology accepted.” Richie grins. On impulse, he extends a hand. “Friends?”

Eddie eyes it suspiciously for a moment, but finally nods, taking it. “Yeah, friends. Of course.”

They shake. Eddie’s hand warm and dry and strong in Richie’s. He has a firm handshake, probably from business classes or something, Richie thinks, and the feeling of Eddie’s hand in his reminds him of something half-forgotten, a dream of fingers intertwined or—

The smirk that flashes across Eddie’s face brings Richie back to the present. “I mean, I am your favorite, after all,” Eddie drawls, teasing.

Richie chokes and feels a flush creeping up his neck, so he turns the handshake into a thumb war, pinning Eddie’s thumb down easily and counting to ten as fast as he can while Eddie yelps and calls him a bastard and yanks his hand away.

“I win!”

“That doesn’t fucking count, you fucking cheater, you _know _that would never count, I never agreed to a fucking thumb war—”

“Aw, you’re such a sore loser, Eds, it’s cute—”

“Don’t call me Eds!”

Richie grins at Eddie’s scowl and pulls his own plate of food forward, feeling his appetite finally back. With a huff and one last glare Richie’s way, Eddie returns to his oatmeal, too, and they eat in companionable silence, the Muzak lilting through the breakfast area.

It feels good, Richie thinks, the word _friends_. It feels like something Richie can hang his hat on (which must be a super old metaphor; usually all Richie does with his _real _hat is bundle it up into a pocket or throw it like a frisbee across the room—which _also_ feels like a metaphor, now that he thinks of it). The point is, it feels like a _label_, and one that’s far safer and more comfortable than _hot funny straight unavailable crush_. Friend is good. He knows how to be a friend. He also knows how to be a friend to someone he’s secretly crushing on, but in his unfortunately copious experience, the feelings do go away.

For the most part. Eventually. Sometimes.

And if it’s hard to imagine both getting to know Eddie better _and _having those feelings go away, when every second he spends with Eddie he can feel his gravitational pull intensifying, tilting Richie on his axis, tugging him out of his default orbit and into Eddie’s, a helpless planet spiraling into the sun— well, at least he knows they’ll be friends until the moment he burns up. They shook on it.

Richie scarfs down the rest of his bread and hummus and then scoops up the ibuprofen tablets and knocks them back. He’s swallowing them down with coffee when he freezes, catching sight of something _very _interesting.

Bill Denbrough, still wearing his clothes from last night, has just left the elevators and is strolling through the lobby. Richie wordlessly grasps Eddie’s arm and shakes him until he looks up and sees Bill, too. Bill, however, doesn’t seem to notice either Richie or Eddie. He just shoves his hands in the pockets of his green bomber jacket and leaves the hotel, whistling.

As if on cue, Richie and Eddie both slowly turn to each other, their eyes wide.

“He wasn’t in _your_ room, was he?”

Eddie shakes his head, mouth falling open. “No. Not yours either?”

Richie shakes his, too. “Holy shit,” he breathes. “This is amazing.”

Eddie’s eyes are gleaming, a conspiratorial smile curling around his lips. “So this means— Bill and Bev…?”

“Yeah. Bill and Bev. And if I had to guess,” Richie says, winking, “I’d say that Big Bill did _not _spend the night in the bathtub.”

***

The five of them wearily check out of the hotel later that morning and meet Saleh outside, where he has a couple vans waiting for them and their luggage. They put all their bags in one van and pile in the other, and as their last orientation activity, Saleh shows them to a library—the best library in Amman, he says—but when Richie looks around at the group, everyone’s just blinking blearily, stifling yawns. Bev looks like a glamorous hungover actress; she answers mainly in monosyllables and airy hand waves and only takes off her big sunglasses when they’re in the dim stacks, and she _never_ takes off the flowy kerchief she has tied around her neck. Richie nudges Eddie, gestures to his own neck, and then points at Bev. Eddie’s eyebrows shoot up almost into his hair, and he snickers.

After the library, Saleh splits them up into two vans so they can go to their host families. Bev and Mike apparently live near each other, in an upscale area called Shmeisani near Fourth Circle; Eddie and Ben’s family is near Seventh, right by AmmanAbroad, and Richie’s is near Eighth. It makes sense for them to split up. Saleh apologetically tells Richie, Eddie, and Ben that he’ll be going with Bev and Mike, because Bev has no roommate to smooth the initial meeting.

“No worries, my dude,” Richie says, waving a hand. “I’m great with parents. You’d only cramp my style.”

Eddie gives him a skeptical once-over. “Parents in Cali must be very different.”

Richie cringes. “Ugh, Eds, don’t say ‘Cali’. If I can’t say ‘tits’, you can’t say ‘Cali’.”

“Why the fuck not?”

“It just sounds weird. No one in California calls it that.”

“Really?” Ben pipes up, feigning innocence. “No one in the O.C. calls it ‘Cali’?”

“_Ughhh_, don’t call it _that _either,” Richie groans, scrubbing a hand down his face as Eddie and Ben laugh. “Saleh, just take all of them, please, I’ll go alone. I can’t ride with these heathens.”

They say a quick yet heartfelt goodbye to Bev and Mike and watch them get in the van with Saleh. They’ll be seeing each other again soon enough, but it’s still hard to part ways. Richie feels a little pang as the doors slam shut.

As they’re walking over to their van, Eddie says conspiratorially, “When you get to your house, Richie, you should ask Bill about last night.”

Ben cocks his head. “What about last night?”

“We saw Bill—”

“—_We saw Bill_, uh, snort beer up his nose,” Richie interrupts quickly. He nods. “Yeah, and then he got a nosebleed. So there was like beer and blood and snot all pouring out, dripping down his face. It was totally awesome.” Next to him, Eddie gags dramatically.

“Jesus, Richie,” mutters Ben, turning green. “My stomach’s iffy enough as it is this morning, I didn’t need the details.”

“Sorry, I know I can paint quite a picture. It’s a gift and a curse.” Richie slides the van’s back door open and gestures to Ben. “Handsomest first, Haystack.”

Ben swallows, still looking ill but vaguely flattered as he climbs in. “Thanks.”

Once he’s inside, Richie whips around to glare at Eddie. “What’d you bring that up for?” he hisses.

“What?” Eddie asks defensively. “Bev was gone, I thought it was fine.”

Richie sighs. “We don’t know what happened. We don’t know if anything even _did _happen. Maybe they just talked and Bill _did _fall asleep in the tub. Maybe the scarf today was just a fashion statement. Who knows? It’d be shitty for us to spread a rumor.” He gestures indistinctly, agitated. “And besides, Ben has a crush on Bev. You wanna break his heart over what could be nothing?”

Eddie’s eyes widen, gaze flickering to the van. “He does?”

Richie rolls his eyes. “Oh my god, you are so oblivious. _Yes_. And get used to it, because she’s the only girl, and she’s gorgeous. _Everyone _probably has at least a little bit of a crush on her.”

“_I _don’t have a crush on her,” Eddie says indignantly.

“Well, I’ll report back to Myra that your heart remains true,” Richie replies sarcastically. “Now get in the van, and keep the Bill–Bev gossip between us, okay?”

“Don’t fucking tell me what to do,” Eddie grumbles, but there’s no real heat in it; he even looks somewhat chagrined. He starts to move but then pauses, narrowing his eyes at Richie suspiciously. “You came up with that gory-ass beer-snorting story really fast.”

“Yeah, I did. Weird, right? Now get that rear in gear, Spaghetti.”

The driver takes Richie to his new host family’s house first, even though it’s farther away, and he’s intensely grateful to Saleh for planning it that way; the idea of having to ride there by himself, after Eddie and Ben leaving, suddenly seems deeply lonely. Saying goodbye to them is hard enough as it is, so he manages to work the word ‘tits’ back into conversation and the last thing he sees before he climbs the steps to the house and knocks on the door is Eddie flipping him off as the van drives away.

Earlier in the week, Saleh told Richie that his host family consists of a mother, a father, and two sons, ages thirteen and eighteen: Hamza and Nabeel, respectively. All of them are sitting in a little living room, Bill included, when Richie’s host mom answers the door with a smile and begins ushering him into the house through the kitchen.

“_Ahlan_, Ritchee, _ahlan, ahlan_,” she keeps saying, her voice gentle. “**_Do you want anything? There’s tea_**. **_Water? Are you hungry?_**”

“_Ahlan fiiki_,” he answers, flustered, smiling back and shaking his head. “Uh, _laa, shukran…_”

“**_Really? No tea? I already made tea…_**”

His host dad stands up and reaches a hand out. “Welcome to Jordan, Ritchee,” he says in English, his voice booming. He is tall and broad, with gray hair and a salt-and-pepper mustache. Saleh told Richie his host dad is a retired police sergeant, which seems hard to believe considering how deeply and immediately welcoming he is. “**_Your name is _**Ritchee, **_right_**?”

“_Aywa_,” Richie answers affirmatively.

“Baba,” his host dad says emphatically as he shakes Richie’s hand, putting his other hand on his own broad chest. “Mama,” he says, gesturing to his wife, who smiles warmly again.

“They like us to c-call them Mama and Baba,” Bill explains from the couch.

_Fucking adorable_, Richie thinks, his heart sincerely warmed, but out loud says, “Cool, so that means ‘Daddy’ isn’t taken.”

Bill chokes a laugh and eyes Hamza, the thirteen-year-old, who is engrossed in the television. “They do speak some E-English, you know,” he chides.

“Better than my Arabic, I’m sure,” Richie admits, laughing. “Enough to get that joke?”

“I d-doubt it.”

“_Ma sha allah_.”

Richie shakes hands, smiling, with Hamza and Nabeel, and Mama shows him to his and Bill’s bedroom and bathroom. The bedroom has two twin beds with bright blue-and-yellow comforters on them. It clearly was Hamza and Nabeel’s room when they were much younger; there are little ruffles around the edges of the pillows. The bathroom is spartan—a shower, a sink, a toilet, and another, weirder toilet right next to the first that Bill explains is a bidet—but Richie and Bill apparently have it to themselves, which is a way better deal than Richie had hoped for.

Afterwards, he sits in the living room with the family, drinking sugary tea that Mama made with mint leaves and trying to make small talk in Arabic until his head is swimming and he can barely put words together. Never before has _talking _tired out Richie Tozier but turns out it’s exhausting trying to listen to someone speak _and _figure out what they said _and_ come up with a response _and _say it correctly _and—if you’re lucky—_have it not confuse the shit out of everyone else because let’s be honest, what you said wasn’t actually the appropriate response to whatever they _really_ said, all because it’s not your native language.

Eventually he and Bill retreat to the bedroom, Richie still feeling a little dazed but able to recharge by chatting idly in English and putting on some low-volume music.

“So what’s the internet situation?” he asks, flopping down on his bed.

“It’s f-fine,” Bill says, shrugging. “Slow, and you c-can’t like S-Skype or anything. Go to AmmanAbroad for th-th-that.”

“What about Facebook? My friend from home has been dying for pictures already.”

Bill raises an eyebrow, smirking. “Yeah? You t-t-talking about us, Tozier?”

“Yeah, I told her everyone here is so hot, I look like a bucktooth giraffe in a herd of sexy gazelles.”

Bill laughs, flattered. “Well, I don’t know about thuh-_that_,” he says humbly, “but yes, you can get on F-Facebook here. It’s just regular WiFi, not like at the G-Geneva. Prepare for it to be s-slow as sh-shit if you’re uploading or downloading a-a-anything, though.”

“_Kkhhh_, roger that, Big Bill, _kkhh_,” Richie says, dipping his mouth to his shoulder and covering his mouth like he’s talking into a walkie-talkie, “hearing you loud and clear, that’s a no-go on the porn, _kkhhh_, repeat, a _no-go on the porn_, over…”

Bill laughs again. “Glad we’re on the same p-p-page.”

Richie spends some time friending everyone on Facebook, starting with Bill, since he’s in the room and can spell out his last name for Richie, and then Eddie, because Eddie and Bill are already Facebook friends and so it just makes sense to start with him.

Eddie’s page is locked up pretty tight in terms of public viewing; only two profile pictures are visible. His current one looks like it was taken for one of his business classes. He’s in a dark suit and red tie, hair gelled stiffly and mouth tight, nearly frowning. It looks almost nothing like him. Richie frowns right back.

In the other picture, though, he’s in a cream striped polo, sitting easily in a yellow Adirondack chair outside of a stately red brick building, looking off-camera as though someone is talking to him. It’s candid but looks professionally done, like a promotional picture for a college brochure or something, and Eddie seems young, much younger than in his other picture, even though the time stamp is only from two years ago. It’s his posture, or his smile, maybe, although he’s not actually smiling, yet; he looks like he’s in the moments before smiling, his eyes bright. Richie wonders what changed between that picture and this one.

Once he’s satisfied he’s wrung every bit of information he can out of Eddie’s profile, Richie friends everyone else and uploads the pictures from his camera: their tour of Amman; some of them all jetlagged as fuck in the study abroad lounge, Ben having dozed off on the couch; and other assorted terrible selfies Richie has taken throughout orientation, most of which just feature blurry parts of his face in front of buildings and people. It takes forever for them all to upload, just like Bill said, so he fucks around with unpacking a little. Bill is lying on his bed, bent over his laptop, and as Richie is turning around to pull some more clothes out of his suitcase, his eyes suddenly catch on a little purple mark peeking out of Bill’s collar.

He grins. “They got leeches here, Big Bill?”

Bill looks up. “W-what?”

“Looks like something got ya,” he says, nonchalant, gesturing to his throat. “A real neck-sucker.”

Bill’s hand immediately goes to his neck, his face flushing. “Y-y-yeah,” he stutters, turning red to the tips of his ears and tucking his neck down into his shirt like a turtle. He pulls his laptop up in front of his face. “F-f-fucking J-Juh-Jordanian l-l-l-leeches.”

Richie laughs heartily and goes back to unpacking. When he’s emptying his backpack, he finds the little Nokia phone they got in orientation, which he has barely used except to give people fun nicknames in the contacts, and to his surprise it reads **\--1 new message--**.

**\--Spaghetti [14:02]--  
**Did bill say anything about bev?

Richie grins, casting a sideways glance at Bill. He starts painstakingly typing out a reply on the number pad.

**\--Richie [16:47]--  
**No but id like 2 c wat bevs got under that scarf bc bill def needs 1 2

Richie stands up again to keep unpacking but only gets one more Hawaiian shirt hung up before he hears the phone buzz again.

**\--Spaghetti [16:51]--  
**Seriously? Thats how you fucking text?

Richie laughs aloud, making Bill glance up before he returns to his laptop.

**\--Richie [16:53]--  
**Using 1 hand. Other is busy jackin it 2 ur mom ;)  
**\--Spaghetti [16:55]--  
**Ugh you only CAN use one hand to text on these phones idiot  
**\--Richie [16:58]--  
**Srry cant fcous ur mom 2 hott ill text asap wen i finish 8--------D

Snickering, Richie drops his phone back to his bed. He takes the opportunity to finish unpacking, eat dinner with his new host family—a chicken and rice dish with slivered almonds that Baba tells him is called _maqloubeh, _which Richie commits to memory because he wants to make sure he can ask for it by name—shower, and change into his sweatpants before he finally picks up the phone again.

**\--Richie [19:55]--  
**Deepest apologies, Edward. You now have my fullest attention.  
**\--Spaghetti [20:05]--  
**I hope you fucking drown.  
**\--Richie [20:06]--  
**Lololololololololol XD XD XD

After Richie climbs into bed that night, he checks Facebook one last time. Everyone has accepted his friend requests, including Eddie. He tags them in the photos he posted and spends some time creeping on them, liking any potentially embarrassing pictures he can find—Ben asleep in various places with his college friends giving thumbs up to the camera; Bev in a messy dorm room with two forties duct-taped to her hands; and many, many pictures of Mike holding different farm animals, all of which Richie comments on with only the word “nice”—before he lets himself look at Eddie’s profile.

It’s disappointingly similar to the public-facing profile. There is only a handful of additional pictures and information, and none of it juicy. For instance, Richie can now see that Eddie is listed as _In a Relationship with Myra Miller_—which, again, would have been nice to know before he learned that Eddie’s eyes crinkle and tear up when he’s really laughing, or that he does his annoyed karate-chopping even when he’s saying sorry.

He certainly wouldn’t know any of this just from looking at Eddie’s profile. Eddie’s tagged photos are so sparse that the ones Richie just posted almost double the total. There’s only one picture of him and Myra, a pinch-faced blonde who does in fact have tits for days and radiates prim unpleasantness from behind the business majors’ committee desk where she and Eddie are seated. Richie scrolls through the few remaining photos of Eddie, mostly in dark suits and pressed button-downs, shaking hands with other people in dark suits and pressed button-downs, and gets the idea that this entire profile is as scrubbed and sanitized as Eddie himself likes to be. Or maybe Eddie’s life really is just that boring.

But then Richie clicks back to that old profile picture. Eddie’s sitting easily in that yellow Adirondack, outside on the green, his hair combed but not gelled, his posture straight but not rigid, his face alert but not tense, and _that_ looks like the Eddie Kaspbrak he wants to get to know. The Eddie Kaspbrak who ran downhill so fast the wind blew his hair back, the Eddie Kaspbrak who angry-danced and pulled Richie up off the floor and laughed in his face. The Eddie Kaspbrak who wants to be friends with Richie Tozier.

He clicks the Like button, closes his laptop, and rolls over to go to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ah, facebook before it became just for the olds. chapter title is from “just a friend” by biz markie. richie also sings some altered lyrics from “jack’s lament” from the nightmare before christmas.
> 
> y’all i am so sorry for the long wait between updates but last weekend i was at magfest and then i spent forever writing and rewriting this and it got to be so long i just split it. so we’re gonna be in january a little longer than i planned but i should be able to post the next chapter even sooner! yay?
> 
> thanks so much to @jajs who finally got to her destination after scary car shit and still managed to read this chapter for me. i love you and i’m so glad you’re not deeaaddddd!
> 
> also a HUGE thank you to everyone who comments. the comments make my LIFE, even if they’re just like short silly ones.
> 
> next time: richie learns that eddie has a secret crush! (was supposed to happen this time but didn’t—my bad!) 
> 
> arabic glossary:  
_ahlan_: hello, welcome  
_ahlan fiiki_: hello [response to _ahlan_ when speaking to female-identifying person]  
_aywa_: yes, yeah [_‘ammiya_ only]  
_laa_: no  
_ma shaa allah_: lit., god has willed it [said when expressing appreciation, joy, praise, usually as an exclamation]  
_sabah al-kheir_: good morning  
_shukran_: thank you, thanks


	6. january vi: i want my friends to think i’m awesome

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title is from “wanna-be angel” by foxy shazam.

**From:** Huda Zureiqat <h.zureiqat@ammanabroad.org>  
**To:** William Denbrough <billdenbrough@yahoo.com>, Michael Hanlon <hanlonm6@ufl.edu>, Benjamin Hanscom <b.hanscom@arch.uic.edu>, Edward Kaspbrak <edward.kaspbrak@gmail.com>, Bev Marsh <bevmarsh213@gmail.com>, Richie Tozier <tozierr@ucla.edu>, Stanley Uris <suris@ucsd.edu>  
**Date:** January 14, 2010  
**Subject:** Class schedule for next week  
**Attachments:** Spring_2010_Class_Schedule.pdf

Dear Spring 2010 students (this is what you’ll be called until you decide on a team name!!),

Congratulations – you made it through orientation! I hope you have a great weekend getting to know your host families!

Next week, your classes begin. You should have received a hard copy of your individual schedules already, but I have also attached a full class schedule if you have misplaced yours. :)

Also next week I would love it if you could send me pictures from your scavenger hunt so that I can start putting them on the wall in my office. As part of this, please work together to come up with a **team name**!

See you all again soon,

Huda

**From:** Richie Tozier <tozierr@ucla.edu>  
**To:** Huda Zureiqat <h.zureiqat@ammanabroad.org>, William Denbrough <billdenbrough@yahoo.com>, Michael Hanlon <hanlonm6@ufl.edu>, Benjamin Hanscom <b.hanscom@arch.uic.edu>, Edward Kaspbrak <edward.kaspbrak@gmail.com>, Beverly Marsh <bevmarsh213@gmail.com>, Stanley Uris <suris@ucsd.edu>  
**Date:** January 15, 2010  
**Subject:** Re: Class schedule for next week

some team name ideas:

richie tozier and the heartbreakers  
richie tozier and the supremes  
richie and the blowfish  
richie rich and the funky bunch  
grandmaster rich and the furious six(!!!)  
rt and the sunshine band  
richie eat world

i feel like one of these should work huda, you can just pick whichever one you like. :}

best,

grandmaster rich

**From:** Stanley Uris <suris@ucsd.edu>  
**To:** Huda Zureiqat <h.zureiqat@ammanabroad.org>, William Denbrough <billdenbrough@yahoo.com>, Michael Hanlon <hanlonm6@ufl.edu>, Benjamin Hanscom <b.hanscom@arch.uic.edu>, Edward Kaspbrak <edward.kaspbrak@gmail.com>, Beverly Marsh <bevmarsh213@gmail.com>, Richie Tozier <tozierr@ucla.edu>  
**Date:** January 15, 2010  
**Subject:** Re: Re: Class schedule for next week

No.

\---

Stanley Uris  
University of California–San Diego  
Class of 2011

***

According to the class schedule Huda sent out, classes start bright and early, 8:00 AM tomorrow.

Which is a Sunday.

Which just seems weird.

Or, well, not _weird_, but like it could maybe be a typo. So Richie does what he’s gotten used to doing over the past two days, since they moved in with their host families.

He texts Eddie.

Richie and Eddie have kept up a pretty steady text stream over the past day or so. At first, the conversation remained squarely on the whole Bill-and-Bev thing. They speculated wildly while Richie tried to pry information from a very tight-lipped Bill. But last night, Richie had been watching TV with Mama and thirteen-year-old Hamza when an American movie came on. Without thinking, Richie said, “Oh,” in a tone of vaguely pleased recognition, and Mama indulgently stopped her channel-surfing so they could watch it together. And as Barbra Streisand, and then Robert De Niro, and then Ben Stiller made their appearances, it dawned on Richie, horrifyingly, like the Death Star, that he was inadvertently forcing his Muslim host mother and kid brother to watch _Meet the Fockers_.

On the heels of this this grim realization came two corollaries, just as important. First, that his Arabic skills were not nearly sophisticated enough to say, “It’s okay, we don’t have to watch this movie, please change it to literally anything else.” And second, that he couldn’t just get up and leave, because they were essentially watching this movie _for him_.

And so he just… _let it happen_.

But when Barbra Streisand said the words, “How’s your sex life?”—the_ literal words, out loud, on the television, _like _Tommy fucking Wiseau_—he couldn’t take it anymore. He needed _some _escape from the squirmy mortification of having suggested to his host mother, who made him sweet mint tea and sat close to the television so she could read the subtitles with her wire-rimmed glasses, that this was the kind of movie he liked (which it was, but she didn’t need to know that). So, with Bill safely ensconced in their room, out of reach, Richie decided to seek refuge in texting everyone in his phone. Eddie was the only one to text back right away—not even with something funny, just because he didn’t know what the movie was about—but Richie seized upon the opportunity and kept up a desperate back-and-forth while the movie cringed on in the background until Mama excused herself by saying she was going to bed, and Richie looked up from his phone and thought dumbly, _Well, fuck, I do know how to say _that.

Still, even after Mama and Hamza left him in the living room, he didn’t stop texting Eddie about wherever the fuck the conversation went (red pandas, at one point?), and this morning, a deeply amused Bill had to take Richie to the bodega down the street and show him how to put more money on his phone card because he had used it all up.

But Richie got his very first “lol” from Eddie that night, so it was probably worth it.

All of which is to say, it’s not weird for Richie to text Eddie. They text now.

**\--Richie [19:10]--**  
Classes start tmrw rite? Even tho its sun??  
**\--Spaghetti [19:16]--  
**Yes richie classes start tomorrow, a sunday, how many times  
**\--Richie [19:17]--**  
But r u SURE?  
**\--Spaghetti [19:19]--  
**YES. Just ask bill if you dont believe me, jesus christ  
**\--Richie [19:20]--**  
Hes not here rn hes gettin sum ;)  
**\--Spaghetti [19:20]--  
**The weekend here is friday saturday because of friday prayer  
**\--Spaghetti [19:21]--  
**Is he really?? With bev??  
**\--Richie [19:22]--**  
Gettin sum TEA  
**\--Richie [19:23]--**  
That our host mama made. Hes in the living room lmaooo  
**\--Richie [19:34]--**  
R u still there eds or did u die laughing from my v good joke?  
**\--Spaghetti [19:37 (1/2)]--  
**If i sent a text in response to every dumbass joke you made i would ne  
**\--Spaghetti [19:37 (2/2)]--  
**ver have any money on my phone  
**\--Richie [19:38]--**  
K mean. But i no u love me bc u still paid 4 2 texts neway sooo

**\--Richie [20:14]--**  
Wait tho eds r u sure that classes start tmrw  
**\--Spaghetti [20:16]--  
**ASK ME IF IM SURE ONE MORE TIME RICHIE I DARE YOU  
**\--Richie [20:17]--**  
Idk u just dont seem that sure 2 me lol

So, yes, classes start Sunday, because Friday–Saturday is the weekend. Which means Thursday is now Friday, and Saturday is Sunday, and Sunday is Monday. Oh, and Monday is _also_ kind of Friday because they don’t have classes on Tuesdays so they can volunteer with a charity that, according to Huda, enriches the lives of Jordanian elementary school children. So every other Tuesday, Richie and Stan are supposed to go do arts and crafts with fourth graders, while everyone else plays soccer.

(To be honest, Richie raised his hand for arts and crafts thinking that Eddie would, too—asthma, after all—but the clear impulsiveness of Eddie’s last-minute hand-raise for soccer was interesting enough that Richie didn’t feel like he got stuck with it. Besides, he’s kind of looking forward to spending the time with Stan.)

But for now, classes. On Sunday morning, Richie and Bill catch a cab to AmmanAbroad and are there with time enough for Richie to pour himself some much-needed Nescafe from the goodie basket waiting in the study abroad lounge before lugging his backpack to the classroom.

Eddie is already in there when Richie and Bill trundle in, leaning his head into his hand so one freckled cheek is squished upwards, his laptop open in front of him. Seeing him again makes Richie’s heart thump once, loudly, like an exclamation mark.

They’re the only three in the advanced MSA class, which means the classroom is far too large, long tables in a blocky U-shape. Eddie’s sitting in the center of the U, facing the whiteboard. Richie, feeling like he should prove just how _friends_ _and nothing more_ he is with Eddie, plops his backpack down on one of the long sides, perpendicular to and far from Eddie’s seat.

Puffing out his chest and holding a fist over his heart, Richie proclaims: “I hereby claim this land and all its riches in the name of His Majesty, King Richard I, and do so name this settlement Dicktown.”

Bill chuckles as he takes a seat at the same table as Eddie, like it’s the easiest thing in the world. Richie curses him silently. Eddie, for his part, only makes a vaguely annoyed noise in his throat, his eyelids drooping.

“You all r-r-right there, Eddie?” asks Bill, pulling out his textbook and laptop.

Eddie nods slowly, making another throat-noise. “Tired,” he grunts.

“Eds needs his beauty sleep,” remarks Richie, slapping his textbook down loudly. It makes Eddie jump.

“Fuck you, I do not,” Eddie grumbles.

“Hear that, Big Bill? Eddie says he’s beautiful enough as it is.”

“Fuck off, asshole, I’ve been here since six.”

“W-why? Still juh-jetlagged?”

Eddie shakes his head dully.

“He probably had to Skype with his girlfriend,” Richie says lightly, jabbing at the space bar on his keyboard to wake up his laptop. “Time difference.”

Bill furrows his brow at Eddie. “Really, Eddie? It’s only a suh-seven-hour difference to Maine, why don’t you just S-S-Skype when it’s the morning there?”

“She has class.”

“_You _have c-class.”

“_I _have more class in my left nut than both of you put together.”

Eddie groans and scrubs a hand down his face. “Ugh, fuck the shut up, Richie.”

Richie whistles, grinning. “‘Fuck the shut up, Richie.’—Eddie Kaspbrak, circa 2010. Print that on money, folks.” Eddie lazily flips him off.

“Seriously, E-E-Eddie,” Bill says, his tone laced with concern. “You’ll go n-nuts if you try to do it this way. People had boyfriends or girlfriends l-last semester, too, and they all ended up Skyping in the e-e-evenings. Just stay late after c-classes get out.”

Eddie sighs, stretching his arms out in front of him across the table, and then sits up straight, blinking wearily. “You’re probably right. Maybe I’ll talk to her about figuring out a new time.”

Richie’s jaw drops. “Seriously? That’s all it takes? _One _talking-to from Bill and he gets a ‘you’re probably right’?”

Eddie yawns. “Come up with one good idea, dumbass, and we’ll talk.”

Then, their teacher sweeps in: a smiling woman in a long maroon coat abaya and matching embroidered hijab. She greets them with a happy head-bob and a shiny, bell-like, “_Sabah al-kheir_, **students, how are you?**”

Her name is Manal, and Richie loves her almost on sight. She spends most of the class introducing herself and getting to know them, all gentle corrections and little icebreaker activities in Arabic, and each time they answer her or she transitions to something new, she hums, “_Hasanan_”—_okay, _but the most MSA way of saying it, and Richie can’t help translating it in his head as _very well _or _indeed _or _yea, verily_.

“**And what did you do this weekend, **Ritchee?”

“**On Friday, I watch a movie**—”

“**Watched**.”

“—**watched a movie with my mother. The movie’s name is **_Meet the Fockers_.”

Bill snickers into his textbook, while Eddie hides a yawn.

Manal tilts her head curiously. “_Meeet the Fawkers_?” she echoes, brow lightly furrowed.

“_Aywa_.”

She shrugs, smiling. “**Yea, verily**.”

At 10:15, MSA lets out for a short break before the _‘ammiya_ class starts, and Richie stands up to stretch his arms and legs and fetch some more coffee in the lounge. He passes some other classrooms, catching a glimpse of Ben and Bev lingering in their beginner class, but no one except Saleh is in the lounge while he opens a new packet of Nescafe and pours it into a clean mug, making idle chit-chat.

When Richie returns to the classroom for Intermediate _‘Ammiya_, Eddie is lying on the table with his face in his arms. Bill has already packed up and left for his advanced class, replaced by Mike, who gives Richie a broad smile when he comes in.

“Richie! _Sabah al-kheir_, my man, it’s good to see you,” he says, glancing Eddie’s way and keeping his voice low, “but I gotta ask, what did you guys talk about in your class? When I came in, first thing the teacher did was ask me if I’d heard of _Meet the Fockers_.”

Richie feigns indignation. “Michael, are you insinuating that I brought up a lackluster, overtly sexual sequel in my very first class of the semester? You’re making assumptions, sir, and when you make assumptions, you make an ass out of you and— mumptions.”

As Mike shakes his head and chuckles warmly, Richie glances once more at Eddie. His face is still buried in his folded arms.

Richie looks down at the mug of coffee he has clutched in his hands, tapping his fingernail on it in a frantic tattoo. _It’s scavenger hunt winners’ coffee, _he thinks, heart pounding in his ears. _It’s right there, in the lounge, he could have gotten it himself if he wasn’t so tired. It’s nothing. Bringing him this coffee is nothing. A nice nothing, sure._ _The kind of nothing friends do. This is a friend nothing. It’s not like you went out and _bought _him coffee. _That _would be too much. _This_ is fine._

Before Richie can second-(or quadruple-)guess himself, he paces over to Eddie. The mug clatters on the laminate table when he sets it down by Eddie’s elbow, hands shaking, and Eddie sits up with a snort, his eyes bleary.

“Wha—?”

Richie exhales on a jittery laugh, trying not to let his affection shine through as he takes in the red crease of Eddie’s sweater sleeve imprinted on his face. “Get it together, man,” he says, voice wavery with nerves. “I talked circles around you in MSA, and that’s _your _thing.”

Eddie blinks up at him and then down at the coffee. He swallows dryly and then drags the mug slowly to his chest. “Thanks, Richie,” he mumbles, and Richie’s heart swells, just a little, as he takes a grateful sip.

Richie goes back to his seat, giddy and vibrating with— with _friend energy_. Yeah, that’s it.

At noon, class lets out for lunch. Richie, Eddie, and Mike spill into the study abroad lounge, and this time everyone else is already there, laughing and greeting each other like it’s been months and not mere days. Ben amiably pats Richie on the back, and Bev touches two fingers to her brow in a little salute, saying, “Wotcher, Harry,” and even Stan twists in the computer chair and gives Richie a slight smile, drawling, “Well, if it isn’t Mr. Eat World.”

Once they’re all together again, Bill suggests the seven of them go to Lebnani Snack together for lunch, and they all enthusiastically agree. Bev passes Richie a cigarette as they walk, and the two of them hang back behind the rest, so the smoke doesn’t bother anyone (a.k.a. Eddie).

Smiling as he lights his cigarette, Richie says, “Missed you, _ukhti_.”

“Ditto.” Bev returns his smile, smoke curling out of her nostrils. “I have an _ukht _of my own, now, actually. And another _akh_.”

“Replacing me already, Marsh? I see how it is.”

Bev laughs. “There’s no replacement for you, Tozier,” she says, teasing. “You’re one of a kind.”

Richie smiles earnestly, itching to put an arm around her like he would if they were in the States. “Don’t stop,” he says. “Flattery will get you absolutely everywhere.”

Then, remembering the last time he saw Bev, he tilts his head to get a look at her now-kerchief-less neck. No marks are visible, which could just mean that Bill didn’t latch on as hard as Bev did; Bill’s mark has faded but is still decidedly present, a light brown blotch on his throat that peeks out of any collar he wears.

Bev raises an eyebrow, watching him closely study her neck with amusement. “Well, you can’t be a vampire,” she says finally. “The sun’s out and I don’t see any sparkles.”

“Other than my sparkling personality,” Richie says smoothly, batting his eyelashes. “Just checking for marks. You know, my roommate got a nasty leech bite the night of our party.”

Bev doesn’t even look embarrassed; she just puffs on her cigarette, smirking. “You don’t say,” she hums.

“I do.”

“Your roommate say anything about the leech that did it?”

“Nah. Bill’s a classy lady, and a lady doesn’t suck and tell.”

Bev giggles, smoke leaving her mouth in puffs. “Suck and tell, my favorite day at school.”

Richie barks out a laugh, and this time doesn’t stop himself from putting his arm around her and squeezing her shoulder, just for a second, orientation be damned. “Dammit, Marsh. You know, you make me believe in soulmates. Like, the _Anne of Green Gables _kind where it’s not just romance.”

Bev smiles widely at him for just a moment before she stops walking entirely, staring at Richie. “Back the fuck up, Tozier. You’re gonna try to tell me Anne _wasn’t _in love with Diana?”

Richie stops, too, holding up his hands. “No, no, she absolutely was—”

“Anne was chaotic bisexual as shit, Richie.”

“I _know _that, Jesus Christ, Bev, she’s a fucking bicon, but she says the kindred spirits thing about, like, Matthew Cuthbert, too—”

Bev holds up a hand. “Wait, _double_ back the fuck up… you read _Anne of Green Gables_?”

Richie laughs. “Summer at a cabin without internet or video games. That redheaded girl’s got chutzpah, I’ll tell you what.” He kicks at her shoe lightly. “Reminds me of someone I know.”

The corners of Bev’s mouth curl up, and then she laughs loudly, clearly pleased. She links their arms together, giggling, “C’mon, Diana,” and they catch up with the others.

At Lebnani Snack, the seven of them drag some two-tops together so they can all lean over the wobbly aluminum tables, catching up over their red baskets of shawarma and falafel and _shish tawouq_, greasy and salty and hot.

“So,” Richie says, muffled through his fries, “is everyone else’s bed made for, like, a child?”

“_Yes_, oh my _God_,” Bev groans. “My sheets have fucking wrestlers all over them. I woke up to John Cena staring at me.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Stan deadpans.

Richie laughs and raises a hand for a high-five. “Great minds, Stanley.” After a moment, Stan reluctantly gives him the high-five, clearly feeling the collective joy of being reunited with everyone.

“Ours are Pokemon,” pipes up Ben.

“And the mattresses are made of, like, foam,” Eddie adds bitterly. “We’re gonna end up with scoliosis by the end of the year.”

Richie rubs his chin, narrowing his eyes thoughtfully. “Richie Tozier and the _Back_breakers.”

“You just got mayonnaise all over your chin,” Eddie says, unamused. “_Again_.”

Richie makes an exaggerated show of scooping it up with a finger and licking it off. Eddie takes a deep breath and lets it out loudly, rolling his eyes.

“R-R-Richie Tozier and the what?” Bill asks.

“He’s trying to think of a team name,” Stan explains, sipping his mint lemonade.

“Damn, Staniel,” Richie exclaims, “we’re on the same wavelength today. Twinsies!”

“I have never felt so ashamed.”

“We _should _come up with a team name, though,” Mike says. “Since we’re all here now.”

Richie shrugs, spreading his hands. “I think everyone really liked Grandmaster Rich and the Furious Six, so…”

“No.”

“I actually did like that one,” confesses Ben.

“So that makes you Grandmaster Rich and the Furious _One_,” Bev says, smirking.

“I think we all know the Furious One is Eddie.” Richie nudges him teasingly as the others laugh. “Whaddaya think, Eds? We could be like Smokey and the Bandit.”

Eddie jabs a fry at Richie. “I didn’t want to be Thelma and Louise, I don’t want to be Smokey and the Bandit, and I won’t want to be, fucking— _Captain and Tennille_, either, okay?”

Richie chokes on his juice, sputtering out a laugh. “Captain and Tennille, _fuck_, dude, your cultural references are the wildest shit—”

“Bill, Stan, you guys had a team name last semester, right?” asks Bev. “What was yours?”

Bill glances sideways at Stan, who rolls his eyes. “It w-was AmmanABoat.”

Richie laughs. “That’s pretty good! _AmmanABoat, motherfucker, don’t you ever forget_.” He turns to Eddie and stage-whispers, “That’s a play on words from the hit viral video ‘I’m On A Boat’ by the Lonely Island featuring T-Pain, a satirical rap song about—”

“I’ve fucking seen ‘I’m On A Boat’, asshole.”

“Well, it wasn’t by Captain and Tennille, so—”

“We shouldn’t choose a n-name unless e-everyone likes it,” Bill says diplomatically. “Do you have any ideas, S-Stan?”

“Actually, I liked what Stan said at the party,” Mike pipes up. “When you guys toasted us.”

Stan frowns lightly, turning to him. “What did I say?”

In a flash, Richie remembers. “Aw, yeah, I did, too,” he says. “‘Welcome to Jordan, losers.’” Mike points at Richie and nods.

Stan looks at them both skeptically. “You _liked _that?”

“It was the _way_ you said it,” explains Mike. “It wasn’t mean.”

“Yeah, we could tell you said it with love, Stanley.” Richie props his chin in his hand and grins.

“Bev called us losers earlier that day, too,” Ben adds, “when we saw each other on the scavenger hunt.”

Bev laughs suddenly, loud. “Oh my god, I did,” she giggles, shaking her head. “I said, ‘Smell ya later,’ too. Damn, I was salty about that fucking scavenger hunt.”

“And Bill said it, too,” Eddie puts in, holding up a finger, “and Richie. When they were trying to get us to dance.”

Stan nods slowly, giving a half-smile. “Right. Bill said we’re all losers here.”

Bill looks around at them all, smiling encouragingly. “W-well? Are we?”

“Oh, _hell_ yeah,” Richie says emphatically. “You don’t get to be a bucktoothed, four-eyed, basket-case theater kid without being a fucking loser, too.”

“Or a fat kid who likes to read,” Ben adds shyly.

“Or have a s-st-stuh-hutter,” Bill stammers, screwing one eye shut with the effort of spitting it out. “Fuck.”

“Asthma,” Eddie puts in, grimacing. “And just general hypochondria.”

“Really?” Richie blinks, feigning ignorance. “I woulda said short.”

“Fuck off, Richie, five-nine is the world average—”

Before Richie and Eddie can really get going, Stan sighs and puts up a hand. “Jewish,” he says, his voice low.

That shuts up Eddie, and Richie’s eyebrows shoot upwards. “Really? And you’re studying abroad in the Arab world? Isn’t that…”

“Weird?” Stan shrugs one shoulder. “It’s not a problem, really, I just don’t go around advertising it. But it does get awkward whenever someone brings up Israel.”

“Being Jewish d-doesn’t make you a luh-loser, Stan,” says Bill kindly.

“A bunch of middle school boys who just discovered _South Park _would tell you otherwise,” Stan replies.

Mike smiles reassuringly at him. “I feel you,” he says gently. “Being black and homeschooled in rural Florida, people definitely tried to make me feel like a loser, too.”

“Fuck ’em,” Bev says, heated. Her fingers are twitching on the table, like she wants a cigarette. “Something you learn, being a girl who all the other girls hate: absolutely, one hundred percent _fuck them_. Fuck them with something hard and sandpapery.”

Mike laughs, wincing. “That’s an image.”

Richie leans back into Eddie’s space, whispering, “Actually, that’s a line from the viral video ‘Let Me Borrow that Top’, in which the character Kelly, of ‘Shoes’ fame, asks to borrow—”

“If I wanted to know, I would fucking Google it,” Eddie hisses back.

“Wait, is calling ourselves losers too puh-painful?” Bill asks, brows furrowed. He glances from Bev to Stan to Mike, to the rest of them. Everyone goes quiet for a moment, looking around at each other.

Finally, Bev shrugs. “Not for me,” she says. “Like I said, fuck ’em. Besides, I don’t feel like a loser with you guys.”

Mike smiles. “Me neither.”

“I never felt like less of a loser than when Stan called me one,” sniffs Richie, pretending to wipe a tear from his eye. Stan gives him a half-hearted eyeroll in return.

“So.” Bill looks around at all of them once more, expression hopeful. “Are we the L-Losers?”

“I could be a Loser,” Ben says brightly.

“Me, too.” Richie sings, “_Soyyy un perdadorrrr_…”

“That’s the wrong fucking language, dumbass.”

“I don’t know how to say ‘loser’ in Arabic. What’s ‘loser’ in Arabic, Stanley? You’re in that extra-special, platinum club MSA class.”

Stan purses his lips. “I think it would be _fashil_. For a guy. _Fashila _for a girl. _Fashileen_ for multiple losers.”

“Welp, that’s us, all right,” Richie remarks. “Multiple losers. _Al-Fashileen_.”

“Thank god it doesn’t have any emphatic letters in it,” Eddie mutters. “I could _not _handle you repeating it every fucking time someone says it.”

Richie winks at him, and Eddie slaps his hand away when he tries to steal a fry.

“Should we do it in A-A-Arabic? _Al-Fashileen_?”

“I like that,” says Mike. “Makes it more… study abroad.”

“What about, um…” Ben pauses, frowning. “I think I’m saying this right, but like I said, Arabic noob, here— _Nadi… al-Fashileen_?” Ben turns to Stan, who nods, smile growing. “The Losers’ Club?”

Bev’s face lights up. “Ooh, yeah, I like it. It makes it feel exclusive.”

“And official,” Eddie says. “Like we should have a treasurer and minutes.”

Richie taps his plastic fork against his juice cup, making a dull plasticky sound. “Attention, everyone,” he announces solicitously. “This meeting of the Losers’ Club has officially begun.”

Eddie laughs. “Exactly.”

“S-So we’re all in agreement?” Bill says, smiling. “We’ll tell H-Huda we’re _Nadi al-Fashileen_?”

“Fuck yeah,” Richie exclaims, as Eddie smirks and says, “I guess we fucking are,” and everyone else adds their own noise of assent.

Mike slides his arm around Stan’s shoulders, leaning into him. “Thanks for welcoming us losers to Jordan, Stan,” he says, smiling, and Stan takes a deep sip of his mint lemonade, his eyes shining and soft.

***

After lunch, they return to AmmanAbroad and announce their team name to Huda, who blinks at them.

“_Nadi al-Fashileen_?” she repeats, eyebrows raised. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, the L-Losers’ Club,” says Bill. “Right?”

She nods slowly. “Yes, that’s what it literally translates to.”

“What’s wrong with it, Huda?” asks Mike.

She shakes her head. “There’s nothing _wrong _with it. It just sounds a little harsh in Arabic.”

“Is there a better way to say it?” Stan asks.

“You could say _Nadi al-Khasireen_. That’s ‘loser’ as in someone who loses a game,” she suggests. “_Fashil _means more ‘loser’ as in… ‘failure’.”

Richie laughs, slinging a leg over the arm of his chair. “So we’re the Failures’ Club? Fucking hilarious.”

“Yeah,” says Eddie, “I think I actually like that better. It’s more… absolute.”

Huda looks around at all of them, still uncertain. “So… you want to stick with _Nadi al-Fashileen_.”

Once more, they all meet each other’s eyes, and as Richie’s travel from Bill’s to Bev’s to Stan’s, he reads the commitment there, his chest growing warmer. When Richie finally locks eyes with Eddie, Richie’s smile widens, unbidden, and Eddie’s bottom lip drags out from under his teeth into an answering grin, his brown eyes bright.

Finally, Bill smiles and turns back to Huda, “_Nadi al-Fashileen _it i-i-is.”

Richie spirals a finger up in to the air triumphantly. “Put it up on the wall, Huda!” he crows. “We’re the Losers’ Club and fuckin’ proud!”

***

The week goes on. Richie has three content courses that each meet once a week in the afternoons, in addition to the two Arabic classes every morning. He gets Monday afternoons off, because that’s when the other content course meets, something about business or economics in the Arab world that sounds like dullest shit ever. But of course Eddie, Stan, _and _Bev are all in it, so Richie can easily see himself hanging around the study abroad lounge on most Mondays regardless, waiting eagerly like a dog left at home. But, like, a dog that can use the time to do his Arabic homework, or dick around on YouTube.

On Tuesday morning—no classes, and volunteering starts next week—Richie and Bill are eating breakfast with their family at the crowded, fold-out dining table in the kitchen when the phone rings. Mama stands up to answer it, and after a few moments, she turns around and holds it out to Bill.

Bill freezes in shock, his eyes wide and his mouth full of food. “**_For me?_**” he asks, muffled, as he slowly accepts the phone. “**_Really?_**” Mama nods, and Bill stands up, chair squeaking on the tile, to take the wired handset into the living room.

Baba laughs, nudging Richie with his elbow and gesturing to Bill. “**_His face_**,” he chuckles, and then mimes the look of shock.

Richie laughs, too, countering with his own, clutching a hand to his heart and nearly falling out of his chair. “**_Really?? The telephone??_**”

Baba hoots, pounding Richie on the back.

When Bill returns, Richie and Baba look up at him expectantly. “**_Who?_**” Richie asks.

“Eddie,” Bill says, his face still confused. He opens his mouth and looks briefly like he wants to say it in Arabic, so as not to exclude the family from the conversation, but can’t think of the words. “He called to see if we wanted to hang out. So I told him we could go downtown and walk around.”

Richie snorts. “What fucking year is it, 1989?” He pulls out his phone and decides to show Eddie how friends get in touch to hang out in 2010. They were just texting last night, the weirdo.

**\--Richie [10:46]--  
**I hear u called to see if bill could come out n play. V cute  
**\--Spaghetti [10:55]--  
**Fuck you  
**\--Richie [10:55]--**  
Wasting some jd just 2 say fuck u i can respect it  
**\--Spaghetti [10:56]--  
**Apparently our host families know each other somehow??**  
\--Richie [10:58]--  
**Ya bill says ur dad is our moms nephew **   
\--Spaghetti [11:03] (1/4)--  
**Ok that makes sense because my host dad asked if i knew bill and i sai  
**\--Spaghetti [11:03] (2/4)--  
**d um yes and then he asked if i wanted to hang out with him and i thou  
**\--Spaghetti [11:03] (3/4)--  
**ght he meant IN GENERAL so i said yes again and next thing i know hes   
**\--Spaghetti [11:03] (4/4)--  
**just handing me the phone and its ringing  
**\--Richie [11:05]--  
**Adventures in study abroad lol  
**\--Richie [11:06]--  
**Dont worry tho eds its cute u got ur host dad to set u up on a date  
**\--Spaghetti [11:08]--  
**I already wasted a bunch of jd texting but it has to be said: fuck you

**\--Richie [11:34]--  
**Comin 2 get u! U better b lookin cute 4 ur playdate w bill. Srry im 3rd wheel :P  
**\--Spaghetti [11:38]--  
**Ben is coming too asshole  
**\--Richie [11:42]--  
**Ooh double date :-*

When Bill directs the driver down a side street not far from where they had their first dinner at Lebnani Snack, Richie sees Eddie and Ben waiting awkwardly on the curb. Eddie’s wearing another polo shirt and that fucking fanny pack again, but he seems alert, like he finally caught up on sleep from Sunday. Richie smothers a smile, seeing a brief look of frustration cross Eddie’s face when he realizes Bill is already sitting up front.

“_Sabah al-kheir_,” Bill greets them as they slide in the back with Richie, Eddie in the middle.

“’Sup, nerds,” Richie says cheerfully, leaning back into the door to give Eddie room, one arm draped along the armrest, the other over the top of the seats.

“Morning!” Ben replies, just as cheery.

Eddie rolls his eyes as he settles into the seat. “You’re not allowed to call anyone a nerd when your glasses look like they’re from fucking 1985.”

Richie grins broadly, pushing the aforementioned glasses up his nose. Eddie’s definitely in fine form this morning, annoyed and spoiling for a fight. “Oh, yeah? And what vintage is your fanny pack, Fonzie? ’Cause I haven’t seen one apart from pasty tourists at Disneyland since like 1992.”

“Yes, you _have_, dipshit.” Eddie, indignant, gestures obviously to his own. “Feast your fucking eyes.” Ben laughs, and Eddie looks pleased with himself.

“_Bill_…” Richie whines, leaning over to clutch Bill’s shoulder plaintively, “Eddie just gestured to his crotch and told me to feast my eyes…”

“I was _not_ gesturing to my _crotch_—”

“I think Eddie is a secret flasher—”

“—I was pointing to my _fucking fanny pack_—”

“—we should tell Huda, but we shouldn’t blame him, Bill—”

“—which _anyone_ would get from simple _context clues_—”

“—don’t blame the children, blame the _parents_, his mom is the one who taught him—”

“Okay, shut the fuck up about my fucking mother, asshole,” Eddie bursts out, jabbing a finger in Richie’s face. “You’ve never even fucking met her.”

Richie’s opening his mouth to retort, when Bill, twisted around in the passenger seat, interjects, “Sorry to i-i-interrupt, but are you guys h-hungry?”

“_No_,” Eddie says, too forcefully for the question. Ben shakes his head.

“C-cool,” says Bill easily, turning back around. “Then we’ll just e-explore for a while. I know some pretty neat p-p-places.”

After a beat, Eddie says, “Cool, thanks, Bill,” noticeably calmer than before. “And _sabah an-noor_.”

“Rude, Eds, waiting so long to greet your own date.”

“Shut the fuck up, asshole.”

Downtown, the four of them spill out of the cab on a bustling street near an ornate mosque with two towering minarets. It’s chilly again that day, and Richie shoves his shivering hands into the kangaroo pocket of his hoodie, craning his neck to take in the dusty spires. Bill explains that it’s the Grand al-Husseini Mosque, and a good destination to tell a cab driver if they want to go to the heart of old Amman, since taxis in Jordan operate on landmarks rather than street addresses.

Bill leads them down a winding sidewalk past dozens of stores selling perfume, jewelry, electronics, and t-shirts, and strangers murmur, “Welcome to Jordan,” in English as they pass, because they stick out like four sore American thumbs. Bill shows them to a shop with shelves and shelves of embroidered scarves; Ben buys one for his mom, and Richie says he’ll do the same later in the semester but knows he’ll forget. Bill walks them down a canopied market lined with dozens of stands selling fruits and vegetables and fresh fish, and roasted nuts that smell good enough to make Richie’s full stomach grumble, so Bill helps him use his broken _‘ammiya _to buy _rube‘ kilo _of sweet almonds and he has no clue how much a quarter kilogram is going to be, but it turns out to be just the right amount for them to pass around the steaming white paper bag as they continue walking, popping them into their mouths like candy. Eddie refuses to try them because of the germs on their dirty hands, but when Richie steals a glance at him, his face in the cool shadows of the tarp above seems charmed nonetheless. The luster in Eddie’s shade-dappled eyes makes Richie want to turn on his heel, push through the crowd back to those fragrant barrels of nuts, numerous as gemstones or grains of sand, and get Eddie his own little bag, so he won’t have to worry about everyone’s fingers grasping through them. But then he recalls his own rule for giving things to Eddie—it’s a friend thing as long as he didn’t buy it for him, as long as it was just something he already had, like winners’ instant coffee, or a smothered smile, or the frantic fluttering of his heart—and he simply swallows the urge with a handful of almonds.

After they’ve walked through the extent of the canopied market, Bill turns to them and says, “All right, I think you guys are really gonna go f-fuh-fucking wild for this next place,” grinning.

Richie, devoted to him already, says, “Lead the way, Big Bill.”

Bill winds them back through side streets and past the same mosque from before, uphill, into the cool sun, until they turn into a steep alley. In front of a shop with a sign that reads _Hammudeh DVD_, Bill turns to them with a smile that is almost proprietary.

“Okay,” he says, voice low, “now usually what I’m about to t-tell you would be huh-hyperbole, but I need you to know I’m speaking l-luh-literally when I say what I’m about to s-say.” He pauses, looking among them, and Richie can’t stop a grin at Bill’s flair for drama. “This place has _f-fucking e-e-everything_.”

Richie’s first impression is that it reminds him of the old-school video rental place he used to go to as a kid, but like if it exploded. The shop is small, with a low ceiling, but still there are hundreds— no, _thousands_ of DVDs crammed into it. They line the walls, floor to ceiling, and they cover the floors in stacks up to Richie’s knees, a fact made all the more impressive because they’re in razor-thin cases and because Richie is so fucking tall.

“_Yaa habibi, ahlan_,” calls a man in his late twenties, laying eyes on Bill. He stands up from where he was kneeling and arranging the stacks, brushing his hands off on his pants.

Bill greets him just as pleasantly; they shake hands and exchange cheek kisses, which still looks weird to Richie but he’s starting to get used to it. Bill speaks to him in _‘ammiya_, gesturing to Richie, Eddie, and Ben, and Richie thinks he understands, “**_New students… I told them there’s everything_**.”

“Yeah, welcome to Hammudeh DVD,” the guy says, smiling, in immaculate English. He shakes Richie’s hand when it’s offered, and gestures broadly to the stacks and shelves around them. “This is where all the new stuff is, stuff that came out recently. Movies and TV shows. Everything is one JD per disc. If you’re looking for something and don’t see it, just ask. If we really don’t have it, I can probably get it for you for next time you come in.”

“Holy shit, they have _Avatar_?” Richie exclaims, snatching up the thin case and looking it over. “It’s not even out of theaters yet.”

“I already h-have that,” Bill says. “You can w-watch mine.”

Ben sidles up on Bill’s other side. “So all of this is bootlegged?” he asks under his breath, like he was just newly born rosy pink from a budding flower.

Richie laughs. “What gave it away, Haystack? The price or the selection?”

“I guess both,” Ben says, turning a little red. He picks up _The Lovely Bones_, studying the cover. “I mean, I _have _been meaning to see this.”

Next to Richie, Eddie bends down to a stack on the floor. When he stands, he’s holding a bundle of DVDs. “They have the new season of _30 Rock_,” he says, almost dumbly. He turns the rubber-banded bundle over in his hands, like he’s expecting to find a sticker on it that says JUST KIDDING, THIS IS FAKE.

“Yeah, that’s what I’m s-saying,” Bill says emphatically. “They have e-eh-everything here.”

“And it’s only 3 JD,” Eddie intones, like he’s hypnotized.

Bill smiles, pleased with himself, and examines a bundle of _Breaking Bad _DVDs.

After a moment, Eddie puts _30 Rock_ back on the pile on the floor. “But it’s all bootlegged,” he says, like he’s talking to himself. “We could get in trouble.”

Richie has to laugh. “What, you think Tina Fey’s gonna fly in on her winged horse and strike you down with lightning? Who’s gonna know you spent 3 JD—_cash_—on some bootlegged DVDs?”

Eddie chews on his bottom lip, huffing a little in annoyance. “Probably no one, but…” he says, crossing his arms, “I want to support the creators…”

“Oh my god, you are fucking adorable,” coos Richie. “I bet you wouldn’t download a car.”

Eddie glares at him. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean? That makes no fucking sense. You can’t download a _car_.”

“It’s a meme, Eds. Your noob ass might know it as a may-may.”

He makes an exasperated noise in the back of his throat, rolling his eyes. “Well, you _may-may_ get my fucking foot in your ass if you don’t shut the fuck up.”

“Eddie, I g-get what you’re saying,” Bill interrupts, while Richie’s laughing, “but how the f-fuh-_fuck_ are you going to support the creators while you’re in Juh-_Jordan_? The internet here is worse than d-dial-up, and you can’t like o-order the DVDs online. Like, we don’t even technically have a s-s-street address for our _house_.”

“And you wouldn’t download… a _house_,” Richie puts in, grinning widely when Eddie inhales sharply in frustration.

“_Still_, though…” Eddie insists, trying to ignore him. “What about Customs?”

“Yeah, Bill, you wouldn’t download… _U.S. Customs_.”

Eddie sighs angrily, lifting a hand beside his face in the angry karate-chop motion with which Richie has by now become familiar. “I swear to _god, _Richie, I’m trying to have normal goddamn conversation, so you need to shut the fuck up before I literally fucking murder you.”

“With what, Eds?” Richie asks, trying so hard to say it with a straight face. “You wouldn’t download a murder weapon.”

“I wouldn’t _need_ to download my _bare fucking hands_.”

Richie nearly doubles over with laughter, and Bill cracks a smile. “As long as you only have like one or t-t-two, it’s supposedly f-fine,” Bill says, shrugging. “Or just l-leave them in the study a-abroad lounge if you’re w-worried.”

Eddie chews on his lip in silence, eyes falling back to the _30 Rock _DVDs.

The man who greeted Bill earlier, probably Hammudeh himself, steps in. “There are more American movies upstairs,” he says. “Old movies, romance, comedy. Go take a look, if you want.” He gestures toward the back of the shop. The walls are so covered in DVDs that the narrow staircase is practically invisible.

When Richie makes eye contact with him, Bill nods in that direction and gives a supportive grin. Ben has wandered away to peruse the other new releases, so Richie and Eddie look at each other.

“Shall we, Eds?”

“Don’t call me Eds,” he huffs. But he turns and heads up the narrow stairs. Richie follows him.

Hammudeh wasn’t fucking kidding. The upstairs is, like, packed to the brim with old American movies and TV shows. The floor creaks under their feet and seems to dip down in the center, so it feels like one wrong move could send the DVDs raining down on them in sheets.

The children’s section immediately catches Richie’s eye and he steps over to it. He pulls down _The Lion King_, Eddie peering around his shoulder.

“I think it says the audio is in Arabic, too,” Eddie says, reading the Arabic on the front. “Not just subtitles.”

“Fuck yeah,” Richie says. “I’ma learn all my Arabic from Disney, just like my English.”

Eddie rolls his eyes, but he seems compelled by the idea of Arabic Disney movies. He picks up a copy of _Aladdin_ and eyes it like it’s seducing him.

“You considering it, Eds? _Prince Eddie, fabulous he, Eddie Spaghetti…_”

“Shut up, dumbass.” Eddie puts the thin case back up on the wall. “No, I’m not getting it. I don’t need it.”

Richie laughs but picks up the case Eddie put down. “Well, I could use some tips, myself.”

As Eddie wanders away from the children’s section, Richie piles his arms full of Disney movies he could recite from memory. He figures all that memorization oughta go to work as part of his Arabic education.

“You seem like you’re well rested this morning,” Richie calls over, still perusing.

Silence.

“You there, Eds?”

“Yeah, I’m just trying to figure out where the setup for this joke is going.”

Richie chuckles. “That one actually was not a setup, but good instincts.”

“Oh.” Eddie’s voice sounds sincerely surprised. “Why do you say that?”

“Well, you’re full of piss and vinegar today—”

“Gross.”

“—and on Sunday you were full of, I dunno. Flat 7-Up.”

Eddie laughs, and Richie can hear him pick up a case from the shelf. “Yeah. I talked to Myra about Skyping later in the day.”

Richie gasps. “So you actually _listened _to someone’s advice? I coulda sworn you’d start getting up even earlier just to be contrarian.”

“Guess you don’t know me as well as you think.”

“Well, it’s only been like a week, give it time.” He puts _Brother Bear _back on the shelf. “So she was chill with changing times?”

“Well…” He hears Eddie shift his weight, the floor creaking beneath his shoes. “I would never use the word ‘chill’ to describe Myra…”

“Eddie, please don’t tell me _you’re _the chill one in the relationship.”

Eddie snorts. “No, I wouldn’t say that, either. I’d say neither of us is. We kind of… mutually reinforce each other’s lack of chill.”

“Remind me never to visit you two. I don’t want to imagine a _less chill _Eddie Spaghetti.”

Eddie groans at the nickname. “Spaghetti isn’t even chilled. It’s _supposed_ to be hot.”

“Exactly. It’s a very apt nickname for you.”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“Aw, so modest,” Richie teases. “Everyone knows Spaghetti is a dish best served hot, and apparently with a full eight hours of sleep.”

He rejoins Eddie farther along the narrow walkway among the stacks and shelves of DVDs, at what looks like an impressively extensive comedy section.

“Damn, they really do have everything,” Richie says, picking up _40-Year-Old Virgin_ and adding it to his collection. “I can only imagine what I’ll learn from this. What do you think ‘ho fo’ sho’ is in Arabic?”

“I’ve never seen like any of these,” Eddie mutters.

“Really? What about _Zoolander_?”

“No.”

“_Anchorman_?”

“Nope.”

“_Mean Girls_? C’mon, Eds, you must’ve seen _Mean Girls_.”

“What’s that supposed to mean, asshole?”

“Nothing, just that _Mean Girls_ is a really good movie,” Richie says, shrugging. “In fact…” He pulls it down and puts it on his rapidly growing pile. “How about we watch it together sometime? You know ya girl Tina wrote it.” His stomach gives a warning swoop, as he realizes what he just asked. But friends watch movies together. That’s fine. Right?

But Eddie isn’t even listening. He’s staring up at something, his eyes as wide as saucers. He pulls the case down. “I didn’t know Andy Samberg made a movie,” he murmurs, almost reverently.

“Ah, yeah, _Hot Rod_,” Richie says, waving his hand. “It’s not _great_ but it’s got some good moments…”

“I’ve never seen it. Never even _heard_ of it.” Eddie’s still looking at the DVD like it’s a lost Beatles album.

“You gonna get it? What’re you gonna say when U.S. Customs waterboards you for spending one JD on your crush on Andy Samberg?”

“I don’t have a fucking crush on him, dipshit, he’s just talented. And they’re not gonna give a shit about one movie.”

Richie raises an eyebrow, smiling as he takes in Eddie’s expression, like a kid on Christmas. He can feel his own face softening, his eyes sweeping over Eddie’s long eyelashes, Eddie’s straight nose, Eddie’s slightly parted lips, feeling his own blood beginning to rush in his ears as he thinks it might be the most adorable Eddie has ever—

Nope.

_Nope_.

_Friends, _Richie. You’re _friends. _And what’s the cardinal rule of being friends? _Be funny_. Make it a joke. It all _is_ a joke, after all, the idea of being attracted to Eddie. Hilarious! Friends aren’t attracted to each other. Definitely not two guys, double definitely not when one is straight and _has_ _a girlfriend, Richie_. Your straight, unavailable bro, Eddie, being cute? Ha! That’s a good one! Say it out loud just so you can laugh at it. Pretty chuckalicious, right? Fake it till you make it, right? Something about smiling making you happy instead of the other way around, right? That’s why you don’t keep it to yourself when you have a thought like that. That way lies insanity. You make it a joke, you make it a bit, it’s _funny_, _ha-ha_. Friends aren’t allowed to be adorable; friends just get teased for looking adorable. It’s funny. So _laugh_.

He plasters a grin on his face, his stomach churning. “Well, if you don’t wanna risk it, you know you can get your fill of bootlegged Andy Samberg for free any time you want. You know how, Eds?”

“Again, not my name.”

“You know how, Eddie Spaghetti?”

“Nope, not better.”

“You know how, Edward Spaghedward?”

Eddie sighs. “How, asshole?”

Richie jabs his thumbs at his own chest and strikes a pose. “Because you got your own average-looking, fuzzy-headed, certifiable goofball right here, bay-_bee_!”

Eddie gives him a deeply unimpressed once-over and then rolls his eyes. “You’re some kinda certifiable, all right.”

Richie laughs, hooking an arm around Eddie’s neck and mussing his hair. “Edward Spaghedward gets off a good one!”

“Fuck _off_, Richie—”

Eddie swats at his arm and Richie lets him go easily, but not before he manages to pluck the _Hot Rod _DVD away from Eddie’s hands.

“In fact, that was such a good chuck, Eds, that this one’s on ol’ Bootleg Andy, here.” He grins, holding the slim case between his fingers. “Consider it a donation to your comedy education.”

Eddie frowns. “My comedy education?”

“That’s right.” Richie’s eyes brighten, alight with the buzz of a great idea. “I just had a brainstorm, Eds.”

“Well, the two brain cells rattling around in there were bound to collide at some point.”

Richie pauses to laugh. “All right, boom, roasted, but no— Eds, here it is—” With his free hand, he gestures to the large pile of DVDs in his arm, then to the shelves beside them. “You said you didn’t know, like, any of these movies, right?”

Eddie nods hesitantly, his eyes wary. “Uh-huh…”

“Well, this semester, I’ma learn ya all about the great comedy moments of cinema. Such as…” He begins pulling DVDs from his stack, holding them up in turn: “‘My name is Dave and I like to party.’ Steve Carell’s chest waxing. And, of course, ‘Stop trying to make _fetch_ happen, it’s not going to happen!’ Or, ‘She doesn’t even go here.’ Or, or… ‘That’s why her hair is so big, it’s full of secrets.’” Richie sighs, looking adoringly at the _Mean Girls _DVD in his hand. “You know, there are just too many to count from this one. It’s so good.”

Eddie is looking at him skeptically, his arms crossed. “_None_ of that was funny.”.

“Well, out of context, sure. But just you wait, Eds, and I’ll show you—” he holds up _Aladdin_ and grins “—a whole new world.”

At that, Eddie shoves at him, hiding a laugh, but he doesn’t protest. So Richie, brimming with excitement, drops the equivalent of $25 on more than a dozen bootlegged DVDs. And they are _not _for Eddie, they’re for _Richie_, he would have bought them regardless, so he’s not technically breaking any rules.

But if Eddie wants to watch them, too, well, then _ahlan wa sahlan_. They’re friends, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OR WERE THEY??
> 
> the _meet the fockers_ thing really did happen to me and i wanted to die. also i made about a metric fuckton of pop culture references in this one so whoops.
> 
> thanks to @jajs for her contributions to this chapter, which include, crucially, the phrase “anne was chaotic bisexual as shit.” thank you for keeping me honest. <3
> 
> next time: richie finally gets weather-appropriate outerwear!
> 
> Arabic glossary:  
_ahlan_: hello, welcome  
_ahlan wa sahlan_: welcome  
_akhi_: my brother  
_‘ammiya_: colloquial arabic; dialect  
_aywa_: yes, yeah [_‘ammiya_ only]  
_fashil/a/een_: loser/s  
_habibi_: my dear  
_hasanan_: okay [like the most MSA way to say “okay” ever]  
_laa_: no  
_nadi_: club; gym  
_rube‘_: quarter  
_sabah al-kheir_: good morning  
_sabah an-noor_: good morning [typical response to _sabah al-kheir_]  
_shukran_: thank you, thanks  
_ukhti_: my sister  
_yaa_: [marker of address, no direct translation but said when you’re addressing someone directly, as in “yaa ritchee”]


	7. january vii: am i too dirty am i too flirty / do i like what you like

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title is from “grace kelly” by mika. 
> 
> also tw for kissing while drunk and mentions of homophobia, although nothing explicit. they’re just in jordan, and that’s relevant.

In fits and spurts, Richie and Eddie watch _Hot Rod_. Over lunch, or between classes, or after class gets out for the day, Eddie will pace into the study abroad lounge, lean over Richie on the loveseat, and say something like, “Hey, dummy, what are you doing? Oh. You’re watching the cat massage video. _Again_. Surprise, fucking surprise. Well, scoot over, I’ve got fifteen minutes before I have to Skype with Myra,” and he’ll plop down next to Richie, quickly disinfect the proffered earbud, and they’ll pick up where they left off.

As Richie remembers, the movie is dumb as hell. Andy Samberg plays an aspiring stuntman trying to make a name for himself by performing increasingly idiotic acts of daredevilry. Samberg is charming as ever, but his jokes are generally hit or miss. One thing Richie _can_ say for him, though? He really fucking tickles Eddie’s funny bone. Like, really.

For instance. There’s a moment early in the movie when Andy Samberg, flirting with Isla Fisher, mutters, “You look pretty,” and when Isla Fisher turns around and asks if he said something, he yells, “Uh, I said you look shitty. Goodnight, Denise!”

This moment was when Richie first noticed Eddie’s Dumb Movie Laugh™.

Eddie’s Dumb Movie Laugh™ has three stages.

Stage One: A dumb joke is made. Almost immediately, Eddie begins producing a reedy, sputtering noise as air escapes his tightly pressed lips in short bursts. The pressure in his diaphragm jerks his crossed arms up and down on his chest in time with these huffed, muffled breaths.

Stage Two: Eddie tries to reel it back in. He curls in on himself, head and shaking shoulders bending forward as he clamps his mouth shut, the air that wants to escape building up behind his teeth, like water behind a dam.

Stage Three: The dam breaks. The laughter bursts through, and Eddie’s body releases, like a bowstring, unfurling backwards as he tosses his head and really yuks it up. And Richie means that pretty much literally: he _yuks_. The way Eddie laughs at the stupid jokes in this movie might be the dumbest sound Richie has ever heard that he hasn’t made himself. It’s like a wheezing seal, or Tom Hanks in _The Money Pit_ losing his shit when the bathtub falls through the floor.

In fact, the sound is so uncharacteristic of Eddie that it usually makes Richie laugh _at _Eddie, which makes Eddie laugh even more, and then Richie, still laughing himself, will have to pause the damn movie because they’re both missing it and ask, “Dude, why the hell are you laughing so much?” and Eddie will shake his head, practically hiccupping, and answer, “I don’t fucking know, man, it’s so fucking stupid, what the fuck,” and swipe at his eyes until he finally, slowly, settles down enough to take in a deep breath of air and let it out with an audible _whew_. And then they can resume watching.

They finish _Hot Rod _on the first day of the second week of classes. The next day at lunch, Richie’s sitting on the loveseat, his knees bent and his feet propped up on the lip of the coffee table, when Eddie throws himself down next to him and plucks a bud from Richie’s ear to disinfect it. “Well?” he asks, businesslike. “What are we watching now?”

Richie blinks in surprise. “Oh, you wanted to watch something else?”

Eddie holds up both hands defensively, as though Richie is accusing him of something. “Hey, _you _were the one who said buying me _Hot Rod _was to teach me about comedy this semester or whatever the fuck. So put your money where your mouth is, Tozier. Or your money where your money is, I guess.”

And that’s when Richie realizes he’s a fucking idiot, because he broke his rule—the coffee rule, about how he could be nice to Eddie and give him shit as long as he hadn’t spent money on it and how that was the line between _friend _and _not friend_—and didn’t even realize it until Eddie himself threw it in his face.

“Uhh, w-well,” he stammers, kicking himself at once both for being too thoughtful and not being thoughtful enough, what the _fuck_, “I didn’t know you wanted to keep watching stuff, so I didn’t bring anything with me today—”

“Ugh, fine. Then just show me some of the dumb YouTube videos you’re always quoting, I guess,” Eddie says, tucking the bud into his ear and crossing his arms, his standard movie-watching pose. “What’s the one where the guy says the thing about Ann Coulter?”

So they spend the rest of lunch watching the video where the guy with the New York accent screams at the impossible Mario levels, and Eddie laughs so hard that tears squeeze out his eyes and he has to go to his business class with his eyes and face red and shiny. Richie waves at him (and Stan, Bev, and Bill, who are also in the class) through the window in the door as he leaves for the day.

As he’s exiting the building, his phone buzzes.

**\--Spaghetti [1:53]--  
**This is worse than ann coulter

Richie laughs out loud. It’s a line from the video. He texts back another as he walks down the hill to catch a taxi.

**\--Richie [1:55]--**  
This is worse than an rl stine book

He tucks his phone back in his pocket and hails a cab, making small talk with the driver on the way back to the house. In the car, his phone vibrates again.

**\--Spaghetti [2:07]--  
**This is worse than reading youtube comments

Richie really wants to know how Eddie is texting right now, in the middle of class, but he doesn’t want him to stop. He types out another quote as he opens the back door to his house and calls a warm greeting to Mama and Baba, and then another buzzes in return as he lolls across his bed and, chuckling, opens his MSA textbook, and the two of them go on like that, back and forth, intermittently, until Eddie stops responding, and Richie looks at the clock and realizes it’s four, when Eddie usually Skypes with Myra, and finally he tucks his phone away and goes back to his homework.

It’s not until after 7:00, long after Bill is home and family dinner has ended, that he receives another buzz on his phone, and Richie very maturely and patiently does not pick it up right away because he can wait until after Nabeel finishes playing him the latest Nancy Ajram music video, thank you very much, he doesn’t _need _to see which funny quote Eddie saw fit to send back to him, he _doesn’t_.

And when he looks at the text and it’s from Bev and not Eddie, he’s _not _disappointed. Really.

**\--Ukhti [19:02]--  
**Flea market this fri, u in?  
**\--Richie [19:08]--  
**Hell ya. Cant wait 4 the shopping montage

***

On Friday morning, Bill is trying to get some work done for his and Stan’s _‘ammiya_ class, so Richie snags an eastbound cab by himself and heads to an area of East Amman called Abdali to meet Bev at the flea market. He sits up front and makes small talk with the cab driver, who asks him where he’s from and gets excited when he says L.A. Richie even starts to recognize some of the landmarks along the way. It’s not until he gets out of the cab that he realizes he forgot to even try to use his seatbelt.

The cab drops him off vaguely near downtown, if his sense of direction isn’t any shittier than he thinks it is. The traffic goes only one way down a broad, unlined road; the cars traveling the opposite direction must be on the other side of one of the most massive tent cities Richie has ever seen. The entire market seems to have cropped up on a large island in the center of this sloping street, stretching down as far as he can see, a rainbow of tarps covering propped-up booths, rows of metal skeleton racks of clothing, shoes, bags, books, anything and everything, crammed into what feels like hundreds of tiny, covered stalls. People bustle under the tarpaulin, unfolding and examining children’s t-shirts, holding jeans up to their legs to test length and fit, their faces cast in orange, blue, and purple light as they wander through the booths.

Richie wanders along with them until he finds the landmark Bev texted him, a pink-covered stall with shaded rows of shoes and sparkly hijabs styled on mannequin busts. He ducks under a hanging embroidered curtain, scoots sideways around two young women examining some heels, and catches sight of Bev’s signature shock of red-orange hair and, a split second later, hears Ben’s familiar shy laugh. When he rounds the corner, he sees that Eddie is with them as well, his arms tightly crossed and his eyes darting to and fro as he shifts carefully out of people’s way, studiously not touching any of the secondhand goods.

Richie holds up a hand in greeting, still hunched slightly to avoid his hair brushing against the tarp. “_Sabah al-kheir_, losers.”

Immediately, Bev spins around with a big smile on her face, the plastic bags she’s holding whirling with her. “Richie! Look at these boots.” She pulls a pair of beaten-up leather ankle-boots out of the bag, her eyes starry. “_Three JD_.”

“No shit?” Richie take them from her, turning them over in his hands. “You serious? These are cute.”

“And this dress!” She thrusts a folded, flowy piece of flowery fabric into his hands. “Only one JD!”

“Damn, all right—”

“And these overalls! Guess how much.”

“One hundred thousand dollars.”

“Yes, but I haggled them down to _one JD_.”

“Holy hell, Bev, you’re a fucking flea market wizard or some shit. Goddamn.” Richie carefully returns her items, his eyes sliding over to Ben and Eddie behind her. “And what about you guys? Any treasures yet?”

Ben holds up his plastic bag, his cheeks pink. “Bev found me a denim jacket. It’s not what I’d usually wear, but…”

“It makes him look like Bender from _The Breakfast Club_,” Bev interrupts smoothly. “I couldn’t allow him _not _to get it. I would get disbarred from fashion.”

“Looking like Bender? So you’re kinda chomping _my_ flavor, huh, Haystack.”

“Whatever the fuck that means.”

“Context clues, Eds.” Richie’s eyes sweep over Eddie, trying to see if he has any flea market finds tucked under his arm. “And what adorable discount fashion did _you_ get? I hope it makes you look like Anthony Michael Hall.”

Eddie sighs. “I have no idea who that is. And don’t call me Eds.”

“Fuck, man, you’ve never seen _The Breakfast Club_, either? Guess we gotta make a list of movies to get next time we’re at Hammudeh.”

“Eddie hasn’t gotten anything yet,” Bev pouts, “even though I’ve found like three sweaters that would look _amazing_ on him.”

“_Secondhand_ sweaters,” Eddie says, looking nauseated, “that other people wore and did who knows what in. Someone could have gotten sick in those sweaters. Someone could have _died_ in those sweaters.”

“Oh, word? I didn’t realize we were at the Addams Family flea market. Badass.”

Eddie just glares at him.

“Don’t you think they washed the clothes before bringing them here, Eddie?” Bev asks patiently. “And even if they didn’t, don’t you think _you_ would wash them again before wearing them?”

“Still, it’s just the _idea_…”

“I know what you mean,” says Richie. “Like, just think of all the times I’ve pissed through the fly of these jeans. They probably have piss particles all over them. I should just throw ’em out.”

“That’s not the same thing, asshole. That’s your own… grossness. This is someone else’s. Totally different.”

“Wait, wait, wait, so you’re saying,” says Richie, ignoring the preemptive sigh that Bev heaves beside him, “that if you were freezing and like about to die and all you had to wear was my hoodie, my _newly washed _hoodie that my host mama just painstakingly laundered her dear sweet self, you _still_ wouldn’t wear it because it has _my_ grossness on it and not yours?”

Eddie fixes him with a petulant glare. “I would rather wear a hundred flea market sweaters than your fucking hoodie.”

Richie laughs. “I would _love_ to see you wear a hundred flea market sweaters, Eds. You’d look like the girl who turns into a blueberry in _Willy Wonka._”

“Fuck you.”

“I’d take you to the top of this hill and roll you down it. Like a katamari. Picking up even more flea market sweaters.”

“What the _fuck_ is a katamari??”

Bev slices an arm through the air between them and leans in. “Hey, I know you two are like incapable of shutting up around each other, but we’re in the middle of all my wettest bargain fashion dreams, so please can we get a move on?”

“But of course, my dear Beverly,” Richie says, putting on his British Guy Voice. “Pip-pip and tally-ho! Lead the way, good gentlewoman!”

“Doesn’t even make sense why there would be a fucking British guy here,” Eddie grumbles.

“Actually, it does, Eds. Look up the British Mandate of Palestine and Transjordan one of these days, you ignorant swine.”

“Yeah, well,” Eddie sputters, making Richie grin, “_you_ should look my real fucking name one of these days, you asshat.”

“He is technically right, though,” Ben says softly, “about the mandate.”

Eddie throws his hands up. “I know he’s fucking right, Ben, Jesus! Even a broken clock is right twice a day! _Fuck_.”

Richie cackles.

The four of them peruse the stalls, plodding slowly up and down the aisles and chatting idly as they go. Intermittently Bev will cut herself off mid-sentence to dart over to a skirt or a sweater, running her hands over the fabric and holding it against herself or one of them to test, although Eddie dodges every attempt she makes on him. She finds Richie a handful of garish button-downs, including a pink Hawaiian shirt that reminds him of one he had in middle school, and when she haggles with the shopkeeper over them, Eddie stands next to her, feeding her Arabic numbers under his breath.

Eventually, however, a chilling breeze reminds Richie of his original purpose in coming to the Abdali market. “_Ukhti_, I’m loving your impression of Alicia Silverstone, but any chance we could move on to the main event? As in, getting me a dang jacket?”

“Oh, don’t you worry,” she says, smiling. “I saw just the thing.”

Now, she leads them with purpose, climbing back through the sloping market, until they’re almost to the top. There, Bev, grinning, shows them to racks upon racks of secondhand leather jackets.

“I saw these before the rest of you got here,” she says, as though she had set them up herself to surprise them. “Now spread out, everyone, we’re getting Richie a dang _leather_ jacket.”

They follow her orders, fanning out through the racks. Bev flicks through the jackets so quickly, muttering, “No, no, no, no,” that she disappears around the bend almost immediately, while Ben takes his time, methodically examining each jacket for size and price, his brow furrowed. Even Eddie leans his shoulders toward the jackets, craning his neck to try to get a glimpse of any discerning features without having to touch them. Richie, for his part, does what he always does in clothing stores: runs his eyes haphazardly over the racks, more instinct than method, pulling out any one that strikes his fancy, that _calls _to him, and putting it back when he realizes what it was calling was, “Fat fuckin’ chance. Who has arms that long, you lanky fuck?”

Then Bev reappears holding aloft a hanger on which is draped a brown leather jacket, obscured by a layer of thin plastic wrap, and calls them all back over. “Okay,” she says, practically buzzing, “now I know I said we were looking for a jacket for Richie, but I think I found something for _someone else_.” She sings the last two words and waves the hanger so the jacket dances before her, the plastic rustling.

Eddie starts, realizing belatedly all eyes are on him, and holds up his hands defensively. “Ohh, no. No fucking way.”

“Aw, _please_, Eddie? It looks like it’s going to be such a flattering cut on you—”

“_No_, I told you, Bev, I’m not trying anything on, this place is a fucking cesspool, I don’t even know why I’m _here_—”

“But it’s wrapped in plastic. I’m pretty sure that means it’s at least dry-cleaned!”

“Ooh, dry-cleaned,” says Richie. “I hear that gets all the corpse particles out of leather jackets.”

“Shut up, Richie,” chides Bev, before Eddie can say the same thing. “I actually want him to try this on. Don’t freak him out.”

“He won’t try it on,” Richie says confidently, knowing that’s the one thing he can say that absolutely _will_ make Eddie try it on.

After a long second, Eddie heaves a long-suffering sigh. “Oh, just fucking give it to me already,” he growls, grimacing as he takes the hanger from Bev, and Richie smothers a grin. He shoves the plastic up the jacket so he can lift it from the hanger.

As Eddie shrugs into the jacket, the leather soft and simple and buttery, Richie feels that familiar heat crawling up his neck. Eddie looks… fucking hot. The brown leather highlights the caramel in his eyes, his hair, and when he zips it halfway up and turns, looking over his own shoulder, the elastic hem emphasizes his slim waist, his narrow hips that Richie’s hands are itching to grasp, sink his fingers into and yank against his hardening—

_Ohhh, no. No, no, no— _

In one jerky motion, he yanks off his glasses and pretends to be cleaning a smudge with jittery hands, allowing his eyes and his mind to unfocus while Eddie fidgets under everyone else’s gaze.

Through the blur of his vision, Richie can just make out Eddie’s hazy outline as he pushes his arms out, testing the sleeve length, and then shoves his hands in the pockets. “Well?” he huffs, tapping his foot. “What do you think, Bev? Was it worth me maybe getting smallpox?”

“Yes, Eddie, oh my _god_,” gushes Bev. “You _need _that jacket. I won’t let you not get it.”

Eddie sighs and does his little half-turn again, and even without his glasses on, Richie wants to walk into traffic.

“Really? It does feel nice, I guess.” Eddie’s voice is deeply doubtful. He turns his head self-consciously to Ben and then Richie. “What do you guys think? Does it look all right?”

“Actually, yeah,” says Ben earnestly. “I know squat about fashion, but I can tell that jacket suits you.”

Eddie turns finally to Richie, the only person who hasn’t commented, which Richie realizes is deeply out of character for him. Feeling all eyes on him, he tries not to allow his hands to shake as he replaces his glasses on his nose and clears his throat. “Yeah,” he says raspily, grasping for something clever to say. “You look like… Amelia Earhart.”

Eddie scrunches up his face. “What the fuck does that mean? I look like a woman?”

“I think he means you look like a badass,” Bev says smoothly. “In which case he’s right.”

Ben nods. “Yeah. And Amelia Earhart was hot.”

“Yeah, she was,” Bev agrees firmly. “That’s what you meant, right, Richie?”

Richie’s mind is spinning. “The badass thing or the, uh— the hot thing?”

No one says anything. Bev frowns lightly at him, concerned, and he doesn’t even want to _look _at Eddie. God, fuck this jacket, it’s the worst thing to ever happen to him.

He clears his throat. Again. (_Fuck_.) “What I meant was,” he says, not sure where he’s going, “he looks like he could disappear over the Pacific.”

It doesn’t get a laugh, because it shouldn’t. Eddie frowns at him, and then he starts tugging his arms out of the sleeves. “That’s not something people say about fashion, dumbass. That means fucking nothing.”

Richie’s head clears as Eddie shucks off the jacket and hangs it up again. “Excuse me, are you majoring in clothes? I don’t think so,” he says, weakly. “Bev, please translate what I said for the layman.”

“He said, ‘Don’t you dare put that back on the rack, Eddie Kaspbrak, because that jacket was made for you.’” Bev’s voice is stern.

Eddie sighs. “How much is it?”

“Forty JD.”

Eddie’s eyes widen. “_Forty JD?_ I wasn’t planning on dropping that much—”

She holds up a hand. “Eddie, I can guarantee you that would be ten times the price in the States. Forty JD is _nothing_. They’re practically _giving _it away.”

“A bargain at any price,” quips Richie, “even smallpox.”

Ignoring him, Eddie tries to hand the jacket back to Bev. “I don’t really need a jacket, though.”

“Right, you don’t need _a _jacket; you need _this_ jacket.” Bev shoves it into his chest, her face sincere. “Eddie, I’m serious. Do you have any idea how rare it is to find something that fits you this well? And for this price? And besides that, it has a story. You’ll always remember getting it, even when you go back home. If people ask you where you got that jacket—and they _will_ ask because you look fucking _gorgeous_ in it—you can say, ‘Oh, this old thing? I got it in Jordan.’ And they’ll be like, ‘Wow, Jordan. Where the hell is that?’ Because they’re Americans and we’re collectively shit at geography.”

Eddie cracks a smile at that. He looks wistfully down at the jacket, and when he looks back up at them, his expression is almost vulnerable. “It really looks that good?” he asks quietly, and Richie’s heart melts.

“_Yes_,” Bev insists.

Ben nods.

“Yeah, man,” says Richie. “Like I said, that jacket makes you look like you could disappear into the Pacific. A.k.a., go down in history for getting your dick so wet you die.”

Air escapes through Eddie’s tightly pressed lips, making a reedy _pff_-_ff-ff_ sound as his shoulders shake up and down. Richie starts to smile, too, relieved that he wasn’t so weird about the jacket that Eddie won’t still laugh at his jokes.

“All right,” Eddie says, setting his jaw. “I’ll get it.”

“Yay! Oh my god, I’m so excited for you.” Bev claps her hands and practically jumps up and down. “I feel like they should just _give_ me my degree after today. Ben with his Bender denim, and Eddie with this fucking baller leather one…”

“Two down, one to go,” says Richie pointedly. “And it’s the only one who came here actually looking for a jacket.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Bev waves a hand at him dismissively. “I’m building up to it. Eddie, go find the attendant and buy that, _right now_, before you change your mind. Ben, go with him and make sure he does.”

As Eddie turns to go, Ben hot on his heels, he calls over his shoulder: “I don’t need a fucking babysitter—”

“Consider him a fashion buddy,” Bev replies airily, “keeping you honest and making good decisions. Now _bye_, baby, I’m onto my next client.” And she turns to Richie, grinning.

“So,” Richie says, once he’s satisfied Eddie and Ben are out of earshot, “you almost had me today, Ms. Marsh, but you’ll have to try harder than that to kill ol’ Richard Tozier.”

She blinks at him. “Excuse me?”

“The _jacket_,” he hisses, and that should be explanation enough, does she really need him to spell it out? “What did I ever do to you? I didn’t deserve that. I almost had to gouge my eyes out with cocktail forks.”

Understanding begins to dawn on Bev’s face. She has the good manners to look sympathetic, albeit amused. “Oh, honey,” she murmurs, rubbing his arm, “I’m sorry. But I’m getting my degree in fashion. They could expel me for not introducing Eddie to that jacket.”

“Ugh, okay, fine,” he grumbles. “But that’s the last time you get to use that excuse today. I’m cutting you off.”

“Deal.” She smiles. “Can I make it up to you by finding you an eye-gougey jacket of your very own?”

He sighs. “I guess you’ll have to.”

They don’t split up this time. Instead, Richie simply follows Bev like a lost puppy, occasionally standing up straight and stretching his arms out at his sides when she pulls a jacket from the rack and holds it up to him. Invariably, she tuts, “Too short,” or, “Too wide,” or, “Not wide enough,” and, sucking her teeth, replaces it, until Richie is simply shuffling after her, head bent down at his phone as he plays Snake.

“Richie.” Her tone is different this time, masking excitement, and when he looks up, Bev is holding aloft a black leather jacket, her smile curled so deliciously that she looks like the Grinch. “Throw out the yellow beanie; I found your new statement piece.”

“This beanie goes with me to my grave, but ooh, I _like _it…” He shoves his phone back in his pocket and runs a hand over the jacket. The leather is a little battered but not stiff, clearly well-loved. Silver snaps dot the sharp angles on the lapels and a zipper cuts across the left breast. “Finally I can look even a fraction as cool as Brando in _The Wild One._ How much?”

Bev’s smile curls up even tighter. “Emphasis on the word ‘fraction’. Fifteen JD.”

He whistles. “A pretty penny.”

“Shut up, it’s like twenty bucks for a leather jacket. And you could probably haggle it down, if you’re really a Scrooge. Besides, you haven’t seen the best part…” Her eyes are shining as she turns it around so Richie can see the back.

Immediately, a laugh rips from somewhere deep in Richie’s chest. He falls forward, bracing his hands on his knees, practically wheezing. “Beverly Marsh! Holy fucking _shit_, my dude!”

Across the top and bottom of the back of the jacket, in wonky cursive, is stitched the following admonition:

_Read Be Tween_

_The Limes_

And smack dab in the center—be tween the limes, if you will, and Richie fucking _will_—is a giant hand-sewn patch of Baby Taz from the Looney Tunes, eating a slice of pizza.

Richie still cannot fucking breathe by the time Ben and Eddie find them again in the racks, Eddie’s new jacket mercifully not on but rather folded neatly over his arm, still wrapped in plastic.

“Lookit what I found,” Bev says triumphantly, brandishing the jacket at them as Richie tries to get a grip. She runs a hand over the shoddy cursive N with too many bumps. “I actually think the previous owner hand-stitched it.”

“The previous owner was a fucking sociopath,” says Eddie. Ben laughs.

“I know.” Bev’s grin is splitting her face in two. “It’s hideous.”

“It’s _perfect_. Gimme.” Richie makes grabby hands, as Bev removes it from the hanger and holds it open for him.

“Wait, you’re actually trying it on?” Eddie asks, incredulous. “I thought you were just making fun of it.”

“Making fun of it?” Richie turns around and slides his arms through the sleeves. “Why would I make fun of something that was so clearly made for me?”

“Not arguing with that,” Eddie mutters.

Smiling, Richie shrugs the jacket on and settles into it. The sleeves are a little short, but the shoulders fit nicely, a rarity. He tests the zipper and after a few hard tugs is able to drag it diagonally up his chest, moto-style, and turns to the rest of them, spreading his hands and grinning.

“Well, fellas, how do I— No, wait, don’t look yet. Bev, cig me, please.” He holds out a hand, and Bev, smirking, places a cigarette and her lighter in it. He lights it, taking a few puffs, and lets it hang lazily from his lips while he puts his hands in the pockets and tilts his head back and to the side, attempting a pout.

“All right, how do I look?” he asks, smoke billowing from his mouth. “Just like Brando, right?”

Bev smiles widely and hums, beginning to walk around him in a circle, straightening the jacket and dusting it with her hands, while Ben gives him a solid thumbs up. Eddie, however, is simply staring at him with that same vaguely ill, glassy-eyed look that came over him at the party, right before he ran out the door and disappeared.

“You all right, there, Eds?” he calls, suddenly nervous. He pulls the cigarette from his teeth and flicks the ash off twitchily. “You look sick. Was it me comparing myself to Brando? Because I get it.”

Eddie blinks and swallows visibly. “No, it’s just, uh— you—”

“Oh my god, that jacket is a work of art.”

It’s an unfamiliar voice from behind Richie, female and lilting, and he cranes his neck over his shoulder to see who it belongs to. Two young women are standing farther down the racks, clearly having been perusing the jackets, as well. The one who spoke is facing Richie, a hand on her hip and a crooked smile that grows when their eyes meet.

Richie grins back and shifts to face her, handing Bev the cigarette as she takes a step away from him. “A jacket’s only as good as its model,” he replies, “so I thank you for the compliment.”

She laughs readily, taking the response as invitation to walk over. Her light brown hair is pulled back in a ponytail, and long, blunt bangs end just above green eyes, which confidently sweep over Richie as she approaches.

“A model, huh? For what agency, Failed Clones of Mick Jagger, Incorporated?”

Richie tosses his head back and laughs, which makes the girl laugh, too.

“Sorry, that was kinda mean,” she says, her expression suddenly mollified. “It’s hard for me to keep my mouth shut. I’m Sandy.” She holds out a hand.

“I know the feeling, Sandy.” Richie takes it, shaking. “I’m Danny. Danny Zuko.”

Sandy looks briefly shocked, like she believed him for a split second, and then laughs, loud and unabashed. “Oh my god, you’re funny.”

Richie grins. “Get it? Because of the leather jacket.”

“Uh-huh, yeah, I got it,” she giggles and lets go of his hand. She glances back at Eddie, Bev, and Ben. “So these must be the T-Birds.”

“Yep, Kenickie, Sonny, and Putzie, in whatever order you want.”

“Um, clearly I’m Kenickie,” Bev says, indignant.

Richie introduces Sandy to all of them, and Sandy introduces them to her friend, who seems vaguely irritated by their presence and whose name Richie promptly forgets. It turns out they’re also studying abroad, on a different program that has several more students than AmmanAbroad does. As Richie and Sandy chat, Richie senses Bev and the others drifting away behind him and it’s not hard to imagine what they’re doing: milling through the racks in expanding circles, poking idly at jackets, talking to each other in low voices, gradually extricating themselves from the obligation of socializing.

“Anyway, a bunch of us are planning to go to Books@Cafe tonight for drinks,” Sandy is saying, her green eyes still trained on Richie’s, her smile bright and winning. “You should come. We’d love to have you.”

“Oh, sure, that sounds fun. One sec, lemme ask the guys,” he says, turning his head to call over his shoulder. “Hey, g— _Jee-zus_!” He practically jumps out of his skin when he realizes Eddie is still _right there_, only a few feet behind him and to his left, apparently a silent witness to Richie and Sandy’s whole conversation. His brow is strangely stormy, his mouth a tight line as he stares straight ahead, looking like he ate something particularly distasteful. When Richie yelps, he twitches and frowns even more deeply.

“What the fuck, man?”

“What the fuck _me_? What the fuck _you_!” Richie exclaims. He hears Sandy laugh behind him, but his heart pounding in his ears makes her sound far away. “Eds, you gotta fucking warn a guy before you go all _Blair Witch Project _on him. Jesus Christ, I almost pissed myself.”

“That’s not _my _fault. I thought you knew I was here.”

“Well, I didn’t, clearly,” he breathes, heart rate gradually slowing. He puts a hand over it to steady himself. “_Fuck_. I really need a drink after that,” he says, tossing a smile at Sandy, who laughs. “Looks like Bev and Ben wandered off, but whaddaya say, Eds? Drinks tonight?”

Eddie’s eyes flick from Richie to Sandy and back again, his face a mask of deep distaste. “_Why?_”

That yanks a surprised laugh from Richie. “What do you mean, ‘why’? To have fun, ya big nerd.”

“Again, you can’t call someone else a nerd when your glasses make you look like fucking Steve Urkel.”

“Yeah, but this jacket makes me _feel_ like Stefan Urquelle.” Richie waggles his eyebrows at Sandy, who giggles.

Eddie, mouth pulled tight and arms crossed, leans over and looks pointedly at the back of the jacket and then stands back up. “Still just Urkel from where I’m standing.”

Richie laughs.

“Well, Steve or Stefan, or Danny Zuko, or whatever,” laughs Sandy, “let me give you my number so you can let me know if you decide to join.”

“O-oh, yeah, of course!” Richie rushes to say, pulling his Nokia out of his pocket. They exchange numbers leaning over each other. Eddie stays where he is, his arms still folded tightly across his chest, his jacket hanging from them.

“Cool. I’ll text you when we have more of a plan,” says Sandy, smiling up at him and stepping away. She glances Eddie’s way before turning. “You’re welcome to come, too, Eddie.”

Eddie makes an indistinct noise in his throat.

“We’ll be there!” chirps Richie, shooting her a finger gun.

“Great.” She winks. “See you, stud,” she says, pitching her voice low like Olivia Newton John at the end, and walks away.

A giggle escapes Richie’s throat, and he slaps a hand over his mouth. He waits until she and her friend disappear down the racks and then turns to Eddie, eyes wide. “Holy shit, dude, what the fuck was that?” he hisses.

Eddie’s shoulders visibly relax. “I dunno,” he exhales. “She was fucking weird though.”

“Oh, did you think so?” Richie fiddles with the zipper pull by his shoulder. “I thought she seemed nice.”

“Seriously?” Eddie’s shoulders are up again, his eyebrows drawn tightly together. “She called you a _stud_. What the fuck.”

“That was a reference to the movie, Eds. You just thought it was weird because you’ve never seen _Grease_.”

“No, I thought it was weird that she would say that to someone wearing a jacket with the fucking Tasmanian Devil on it,” Eddie shoots back. “And I’ve seen _Grease_. Pretty sure John Travolta’s jacket didn’t have any patches of baby cartoon characters.”

“Well, there’s no accounting for taste, I suppose,” laughs Richie. “But hey, if a cute girl wants to call me a stud for wearing a dumbass leather jacket, then _ma sha allah_, I’m not gonna complain. Bev, there you are!” He turns as Bev and Ben reappear. “Yo, I think this jacket might be magical. I put it on and suddenly girls are throwing their numbers at me.”

“I would believe that jacket is _cursed_,” Bev chuckles. “But it does look good on you, _akhi_. Not to toot my own horn, but I am seriously on fucking fire today. I should have my own reality show at this point.”

“And I know just how we can celebrate.” Richie grins, dragging the zipper forcefully down as he shucks the jacket off, finally, running a fond hand over Baby Taz’s pizza. “Sandy invited me to drinks with her and some other people from CIEE at Books@ tonight. Wanna come?”

Bev tilts her head sadly. “Oh, I can’t, actually. I have plans.”

Richie frowns. “Really? What?”

“Bill and I are getting dinner in Abdoun. That place Huda was recommending? The Blue Fig?”

Beside her, Ben’s face falls almost imperceptibly before he plasters on a smile. “That sounds nice,” he says earnestly. Richie’s heart goes out to him.

“Well, what about you, Haystack?” Richie asks, rolling his fists in the air. “Wanna paint the town red?”

“I actually promised my mom a phone call tonight,” says Ben, “but text me later, maybe it won’t go long.”

Finally, Richie turns to Eddie, who fixes him with a deeply uninterested look. Richie tries to flash a winning smile. “It looks like the Spaghetti will have to feed the whole group tonight.”

“No. No, no, no. Absolutely not, and _especially_ not after calling me that.”

“What if I promise to only call you by your actual name the whole night?”

“Considering that is the fucking bare minimum of most human interactions, I think it would be well above your capabilities.”

Richie barks out a laugh. He holds up a hand, snapping and looking around. “Excuse me, waiter? This Spaghetti is too spicy for my taste—”

“Keep it up, asshole, see if I get a drink with you ever.”

“Okay, how about we make a deal? I won’t call you Spaghetti, and you can call me by the name on my fake ID,” Richie says, fishing his wallet out of his pocket. He pulls out the Nevada license that Carla’s older brother got him when they were seventeen and hands it over proudly.

Eddie squints down at it, and Richie knows when he finds the name because his mouth sets into a thin hard line. He looks back up.

“Bendydick Cumberass?”

Behind him, Bev cackles.

Eddie waves the card in the air accusingly. “What the fuck? This isn’t even clever. What bouncer would ever believe that this is your actual name?”

“Mostly they laugh at the audacity and wave me through,” says Richie, reaching for it.

“It sounds like the name of an actor in the porn version of _The Other Boleyn Girl_,” says Bev. “_The Other Bonin’ Girl_.”

“It sounds like you put your name into an X-rated Lord of the Rings name generator,” says Ben.

“It’s fucking stupid, is what it sounds like. And you don’t even need this here, the drinking age is eighteen.” Eddie flips it at Richie, and it beans him in the chest.

Richie fumbles for it, catching it against his thigh. “So you’re saying you won’t call me by my legally given name, Bendydick, tonight?”

“Tonight or any other night.”

“Maybe Sandy will if she gets a good look,” Bev hoots.

“Yeah, I bet _Sandy_ would think my name was funny,” Richie says indignantly. “She called this jacket a work of art!”

Eddie groans in his throat, gesturing angrily. “Only insofar as it could be Picasso’s fucking— MS Paint fever dream.”

Richie really laughs at that, planting one hand on his knee and the other on Eddie’s shoulder to steady himself. “Holy fuck, Eds,” he breathes. “I’m going to sue you for theft. Being the funny one is _my _thing, dude, and you just stole it.”

The corners of Eddie’s mouth twitch up slightly, his eyes softening a little. “Whoever told you that you were funny, Tozier? Because they’re the ones you should _actually_ sue. In fact, I think they might qualify for a class-action lawsuit.”

When Richie finally catches his breath, he stands up straight and slides the fake ID back in his wallet. “All right, enough lollygagging,” he breathes, nudging at Eddie’s shoulder. “Show me to the shopkeep, good sir! I’d like to buy some magic beans.”

“The only beanpole around here is you,” Eddie shoots back, but leads him through the racks.

After Richie pays for the jacket—a paltry 15 JD, a small price to pay for a jacket with a built-in catchphrase—and as he and Eddie roam the aisles looking for Ben and Bev, Richie’s thoughts turn to the invitation from Sandy and how it will feel to interact with a bunch of new people, people who are not Losers. The past three weeks, he realizes, have been gradually lowering his defenses. He’s never felt so comfortable in a group of people. With individuals, sure—like Carla, or maybe a handful of the other students in his improv troupe—but to find an actual, bona fide, coherent _group_…? That’s something Richie hasn’t known before. Not that he doesn’t still try too hard even with the other _Fashileen_. He does, he _knows_ he does, that shit’s hard to turn off. But it’s different with them. At the same time as he knows he tries too hard he also knows, somewhere deep in his bones, that he doesn’t _have _to. That he can smoke a cigarette with Bev sitting on her hotel windowsill and confide his insecurities. That he can shake hands with Eddie and say _friends_ and not have Eddie laugh in his face because he’s so fucking weird. That he can look Bill and Bev and Mike and Stan and Ben and _Eddie_ in the eyes and say, “We’re the Losers’ Club and fuckin’ proud,” and feel that brazen, euphoric feeling of… _us_.

But to be without that for a night, now that he’s had it? It would be like putting on a costume from an old performance. It was fitted to him back then, sure, but now the shoulders are tight and the fabric is scratchy. It might look the same, but he’ll feel different inside it.

“It really would be fun if you came tonight, you know,” he says to Eddie.

Eddie glances up at him, then draws his bottom lip in between his teeth. “I don’t know, Richie,” he sighs. “I’ve only ever been to a bar once before, and it was for this dumb Pints with Professors thing my school does.”

Richie takes a beat. “The fact that I’m not going to make fun of you for that right now should tell you just how much I want you to come.”

Eddie stops and turns to really look at him, and something inside Richie tells him to look back unflinchingly. When his eyes flick down to the brown leather jacket, still in plastic, still folded protectively, preciously, over Eddie’s arms, he hears in his head a plaintive, _It really looks that good?, _he knows why.

After a moment, Eddie sighs again. “I won’t know anyone.”

“You’ll know me,” Richie says. “I’ll be there the whole time. I’ll make sure it’s not awkward, and— and we can leave together, whenever you want. Okay?”

Eddie worries at his lip, taking a deep breath. “If you _promise_—”

“I do.”

“I’m serious,” insists Eddie. “I’m not like you. I can’t just, like, bullshit my way through social interactions and have everyone magically like me.”

Richie snorts. “I don’t know how you got _that_ impression of what my life is like, but… I do promise. I’ll be there.”

Eddie stares at him for a long time and finally sighs, once again. “All right. I’ll go.”

Richie whoops and slings an arm around Eddie as they continue walking down the aisle. “You’re not gonna regret this, Eds.”

“I do already. And don’t call me Eds.”

***

Sandy texts Richie later, after he gets back home, to tell him the time to meet her at Books@Cafe. Richie chooses one of his less garish button-downs, with geometric patterns rather than any discernible objects or animals, but he decides to wear his _UHF _shirt with Weird Al’s face on it to balance it out. That’s what they call_ finesse_. He finishes the look proudly with his new leather jacket, which earns a bemusedly approving nod from Bill.

Richie heads down to meet Sandy around 6:30 or 7:00, and Eddie tells Richie to expect him around 8:00. Things kick off early in Jordan, as he learns from Bill, who, looking nervously dapper in a green flannel as he smooths his auburn hair into a part in his wardrobe mirror, tells Richie that their host parents always want them home by midnight.

“But we can p-push it by ten or fifteen minutes if we cuh-call to let them know we’re just c-c-catching a c-cab.”

“Seriously? I haven’t had a curfew since I was, like, thirteen.”

“I kn-know,” says Bill, peering at his reflection. “We live eighth-grade l-lives in t-tuh-twenty-year-old bodies.”

When Richie gets to Books@Cafe, the place is clearly gearing up for a raucous Friday (which is Saturday) night. It’s odd to be back here, when last time it was for a scavenger hunt and he was hand-feeding a contrite Eddie his falafel sandwich.

The downstairs, a proper bookstore, is closing at this time, and the cashier points him toward a staircase in the corner, which leads up to a bar. An unconcerned bouncer waves him through without even checking his ID, and Richie wanders the many discrete rooms of the upstairs bar-slash-café until he hears a shriek and he finds Sandy waving her arms at him frantically from a semicircular booth with four or five other female friends. She stands up as he approaches and draws him into a hug. She smells like perfume and the fruity pineapple drink Richie can see over her shoulder.

“I’m so glad you made it!” she exclaims when they break away. She turns to the table, her hand still on Richie’s back. “Guys, this is Richie.”

“And I didn’t even have to show my fake ID tonight,” Richie says, feeling his mask slotting back over his face, “so you can call me that instead of Bendydick Cumberass.”

Sandy laughs loudly, hiding her face in Richie’s shoulder, and the rest of the girls do, too. He’s treated to such a flurry of introductions that he doesn’t think he will ever remember all these new names, and then Sandy declares she’s going to order them shots, and he _knows _he will never remember them.

Sandy steers him to the bar, where she orders half a dozen shots of tequila, and Richie orders a vodka tonic with extra lime, which is Carla’s favorite cocktail when she’s on a date (and when she’s not, it’s Bacardi and Mountain Dew, a concoction she dubbed the “Sorry, Mom”), because he’s feeling nostalgic and Sandy reminds him a little of Carla, in an askew, off-kilter sort of way. He wishes he could text Carla right now, actually, and tries to think of the last time they Gchatted. Was it before or after they started classes? He can’t remember.

“This place is apparently a gay bar on Thursdays.”

Richie blinks, shocked from his reverie, and realizes Sandy’s been trying to make conversation this whole time. “Really?” he asks, allowing sincere surprise to color his voice.

“Yeah. Can you believe it? I didn’t know Jordan even acknowledged gays. I thought it was like Iran.”

“Oh, yeah.” He’s feeling awkward now. He can’t tell from her tone whether she wishes it were more like Iran or less.

“But apparently the owner is, like, friends with Queen Rania, so,” she says, shrugging. “It’s chill.”

“Oh, yeah,” he says, _again_, and kicks himself. He accepts his drink from the bartender and takes a big sip, and, feeling bold, he says, “I’m from California, so, you know.”

“Right,” she teases, “you’re all at least a little bit gay out there by default.”

“Well, my hometown has actually been represented by Republicans since the district was drawn,” Richie says bitterly, “but in general, yeah.”

Sandy laughs, taking the tray of shots from the bartender. “Well, I’m from Massachusetts, so I think we got you beat,” she says, grinning. “First state to legalize same-sex marriage.”

“Prop 8 was a fucking travesty,” Richie spits.

“Don’t worry, we’ll get ’em yet, and federally,” she says brightly, and Richie, feeling relieved, follows her back to the table.

The shots are a mistake, he knows right away. And the second round of shots—whiskey this time—is an even bigger mistake. He knows this, too. What he doesn’t know is how many vodka tonics he has in between them, nor how much time has passed, all that he knows is that he’s laughing a lot and that he’s making everyone else laugh a lot and that his arms are feeling loose and heavy by the time he looks up and realizes that Eddie is standing at the end of the table. He’s looking a little harried but nonetheless handsome in his brown leather jacket, shiny and high-def in the blur around him, and Richie feels a rush spread through his body at the sight.

“Fuck, Richie, I’ve been looking all over—”

“Eds! You’re made it!” Richie extricates his arm from around Sandy and stands up. His mind fizzes behind his eyes as he does, his vision swimming, and when he blinks realizes that he’s nearly up _against_ Eddie, who is blinking right back at him, shocked.

“Uh, hi—”

Grinning, Richie grips Eddie’s shoulders and clears his throat. “Attention, ladies, Ah say, Ah say, attenshun!” He stamps his foot, until everyone looks their way, and feels Eddie shifting nervously in his tingling hands. “This tall drink of water— well, not _tall_— this short, angry drink of water is my good friend Eddie Spaghetti Kaspbrak. Please treat him as you would your firstborn child because he is precious as fuck—”

“Richie—”

“And I know what all you perverts are thinking and it’s true, this man can wear the shit out of a leather jacket, but sorry, ladies, he’s taaakennnn…”

Sandy gives an exaggerated _boo_ and some of the other girls join in. When Richie glances at Eddie, he notices his cheeks are slightly pink.

“Richie, Jesus Christ—”

“What about you?” calls one of the girls. “Are _you _taken?”

“Well, technically, yes,” says Richie, grinning as the girls boo again. He sees Eddie look at him, frowning, and smirks at him. “But Eddie’s mom and I have an open relationship.”

Eddie shoves him off as Richie and the girls laugh. “Fuck you, dude.”

Richie grins at him. “Aw, c’mon, Eds, don’t be like that. You could be callin’ me Dad someday.” He raises an eyebrow, pitching his voice lower. “Or you could call me _Daddy_.” The table erupts in laughter again.

“You are the fucking worst. I don’t know why I even came here—”

“Shh,” Richie says, smashing a finger to Eddie’s lips. Eddie jerks his head away and shoves at his hand, making Richie grin. “Lemme get you a drink, Eds, for coming down here for li’l old me. Whaddaya want?”

Eddie looks around warily. “Maybe I’ll just take a water.”

“Nooo, Eds, c’mon, my treat,” Richie insists, wheedling, trying to put on his best impression of puppy-dog eyes.

After a few seconds, Eddie sighs. “Fine. I guess it would be dumb to come down here and not get a drink.”

“That’s the spirit! The spirit for spirits. That’s a good one, huh, Eds?”

“Don’t call me Eds.”

Richie puts an arm around him and drags him towards the bar. “Now, what do you like to drink? You can have anything your heart desires.” He gestures dramatically at the selection.

“I don’t know. I don’t really drink.”

“No problem, you’ve come to the right man. Let me just take in your aura…” Richie puts a hand in front of Eddie’s face and closes his eyes, like he’s receiving some sort of signal from him. He opens his eyes. “Vodka tonic. With extra lime.”

Eddie pointedly looks down at Richie’s glass, where three squeezed lime wedges sit among melting ice. “Is that what you’re drinking?”

“Well, look at that, Eds. I’d say that you—” he pauses “—read between the limes.”

Eddie covers his face with his hand, groaning. “I think I walked right into that one. I don’t know how because the setup was in no way airtight, but somehow I did.”

Richie grins, hailing the bartender. “Don’t blame yourself, I would have worked it into conversation no matter what.”

As they wait for their drinks, Richie leans heavily on the bar, the side of his head propping up his hand, and observes Eddie. His vision is still swimming a little, but just enough to make the background hazy, bringing Eddie into sharp focus. Richie can see the slight shadow of the sparse hair along his jaw and upper lip, growing in from his close shave, and that the short hair at the nape of his neck is starting to curl ever so slightly, not up and out, just around the soft skin. His bottom lip is rough and chapped and pink when he draws it under his front teeth, worrying it, and Richie wants to draw Eddie close to him, to slide his fingertips through that short, curling hair at his neck, to suck that rough lip between his and sink his own teeth into it and drown in the low noises he might pull from Eddie’s chest, pressed against his.

“What?”

Richie swallows, dragging his eyes from Eddie’s mouth. He realizes he can’t feel his teeth. “What?”

Eddie frowns. “You were staring. And being quiet, which was way weirder.”

“Just thinkin’ ’bout your mom, Eds. You look so much like her.”

“Fuck you.”

When they get their drinks, Richie, straightening languidly from his heavy lean, squeezes all of his lime wedges into his drink immediately, sucking the juice and tonic off his fingertips when he’s done. When he looks up, Eddie is giving him an annoyed look. “What?”

Eddie sighs. “Must you do that?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Richie says, and makes a show of wrapping his tongue sloppily around his middle and index fingers.

Eddie’s eyes zero in on Richie’s mouth with something like morbid fascination. “Seriously?” he demands, his gaze flicking from Richie’s eyes to his mouth and back again. “When was the last time you washed your hands? You know they’re probably covered in germs, right?”

“What can I say? I guess I’m just a dirty boy, Eds.” He winks.

Eddie looks away, his expression irritated and vaguely ill, and jabs at his own lime wedges with the tiny straws until they’re mashed into the bottom of the glass. “Why the fuck did I come here?” he mutters, and Richie laughs.

“C’mon, let’s go back to the group. They’re no Losers, but they’re cool.”

When they get back to the table, Sandy exclaims and tugs at Richie’s wrist so he plops down right next to her. She leans into his ear, shouting over the music, “Just in time! We want a man’s opinion.”

“Okay, wait right here, I think I saw one at the bar—”

“Oh, stop.” Sandy laughs loudly, her grip still tight around his wrist. “Taylor Swift: hot or not? Megan here thinks she looks like an alien.”

“She _does_!”

“Hmm, this is a serious question and deserves serious consideration. Allow me to conjure up her image before me,” Richie says seriously, closing his eyes. He pretends to be thinking deeply, taking a long sip of his drink, as the girls around the table fall quiet. Finally, he opens his eyes and proclaims, “I do declare T-Swift… _hot_!”

Immediately the table erupts into discussion. “_See_, Megan? I _told _you,” says Sandy, jabbing a finger at her. “I fucking _told _you.”

“That’s only one opinion,” protests, presumably, Megan. “Ask the other guy. Spaghetti.” She giggles.

Richie grins at that, turning to Eddie, who is still standing awkwardly at the end of the table. “Hey, pull up a chair, Eds,” Richie says, gesturing to the table next to them, where another group has an empty chair.

Eddie glances at them nervously. “Oh, no, they’re probably using it, and I don’t know the _‘ammiya_—”

“Allow me.” Richie stands up and leans over to the group. “**_Excuse me_**,” he says, placing one hand on the chair and gesturing to it with the other. “**_Is it a problem?_**” The people at the table smile and shake their heads, and Richie thanks them as he scrapes the chair over to the end of their own table. “Your throne, Prince Edward.”

Eddie looks surprised as he sits down. “Thanks… How did you—?”

Richie shrugs and smiles around the straw in his mouth. “Saying ‘excuse me’ and pointing at things will get you pretty far in life, Eds.”

“All right, Eddie,” says Sandy, cutting in. “Your verdict. Taylor Swift: hot or not?”

Eddie shifts in his seat, looking uncomfortable with all eyes on him, so Richie says loudly, “I’ma guess it’s a ‘not’ from Eds. My boy is a tits man. Sorry, I meant a boobies man.” He gives Eddie a smirk, and Eddie scowls back.

“No I’m not, I just don’t know anything about Taylor Swift—”

“She looks like an alien!” shouts the one who thinks she looks like an alien, Richie’s already forgotten her name again.

“Fuck you, Megan, she does not,” drawls Sandy. She splays a hand on the table in front of Eddie to get his attention. “She’s the one who Kanye interrupted at the VMAs.”

“Oh, yeah. Right.”

“You probably know some Taylor Swift songs and just don’t know they’re Taylor Swift songs,” says the girl next to Eddie, who has been on the quiet side this evening. “Do you know ‘Love Story’?”

“Um, I don’t think so. How does it go?”

Richie smiles, sitting back and sipping his drink, pleased that Eddie’s chatting with someone.

Sandy leans in next to him and says, loudly, over the music, “Wanna go smoke?”

Feeling slow and warm, buzzing strongly, Richie nods and downs the rest of his drink, scooting out of the booth so Sandy can get out, too. He grabs his jacket and puts a hand on Eddie’s shoulder and leans down beside his ear, feeling Eddie tense beneath his hand. “Hey, we’re gonna go outside for a quick smoke, all right? Hold down the fort, will ya?”

“Oh— okay—”

Richie gives his shoulder a strong pat and then follows Sandy out of the bar and down the stairs.

The air outside is cool and quiet, the muffled music playing upstairs just faintly audible. The click of Sandy’s lighter brings Richie’s focus gradually to her face as she lights the cigarette between her lips, puffs on it, and then gently takes it from her mouth and places it in Richie’s, her green eyes dark in the moonlight as she lights her own. They smoke in silence for a while, watching the smoke and their breaths curl in the cool night air. Richie bops his head lightly to the techno beat playing.

Finally, Sandy breaks the silence. “That jacket really does look bangin’ on you, by the way,” she says on an exhale, smoke emphasizing her words.

“Aw, shucks,” Richie says, scuffing the toe of his Converse on the ground bashfully.

“Don’t do the self-deprecating act, I’m serious.”

“Oh, it’s not an act. I really can’t take a compliment. Like, clinically incapable.” He shrugs, sucking at the cigarette and exhaling the smoke. “Look, try it again. Say something nice.”

“All right,” Sandy laughs. She pauses, regarding him. “You look so hot in that jacket, I want to make out with you.”

Richie fans himself with his hand, putting on his Southern Belle Voice. “Why, Sandra, mah stahs! Yah’re givin’ me the vay-pahs!”

She laughs indulgently and takes a step forward. “You’re such a nerd,” she giggles. “And you’re not making me want to kiss you less, if that was your goal. Was it?”

Richie giggles, too, feeling silly. He shakes his head. “Goals, what are those? You’re implying I have them other than making people laugh.”

“So… does that mean it’s okay if I do kiss you?” She looks uncertain, her face tipped up towards Richie’s, smiling slightly. “Gotta say, I don’t normally have to specifically ask, three times, but…”

He sweeps his eyes over her face, taking in how close she is, and dips his head down to knock his mouth into hers.

She kind of jolts, surprised, and then breaks away, laughing. “Okay, cool,” she says. “Let’s try that again,” and leans up.

“Okay,” Richie murmurs, feeling vaguely lightheaded as their mouths meet again. She tastes like cigarettes, mostly, tinged with pineapple juice, and Richie’s sure he’s not much better, but she’s kissing him nicely, her hand running over his neck in a way that would give him goosebumps if he were any less tipsy. He hears a distant car horn, then, and remembers where they are, breaking away from her. “Wait,” he says, breathless. “Are you sure it’s all right to do this?”

“What do you mean?”

Richie’s head is spinning a little, from the alcohol and from having another person so close. “I mean— they taught us about, like— boy–girl touching and how you’re not s’posed to in public, here—”

“I don’t give a shit.” And she presses her mouth to his again, crowding him against the wall, and he puts his hands on her back, feeling her shoulder blades moving under his fingers.

It’s nice, Sandy’s a good kisser, but Richie’s mouth is practically numb from the booze, he still can’t feel his teeth, and he gets the impression he’s only kind of keeping up, like he’s kissing her back on a time lag. It’s making him feel guilty. “I’m sorry,” he mutters into her mouth. “I’m usually a better kisser than this—”

She laughs, and he blinks at her closeness. “You’re doing fine, Richie, I don’t mind.”

“You’re nice,” he mumbles, as she bites at his bottom lip. “You’re being nice to me.”

“No, I’m not. I just think you’re funny and hot and I wanted to kiss you, so I did.”

“Well, I think you’re—” His head is really swimming, but this time he thinks it might be more from the compliments than anything else. “—swell.”

She really laughs at that, ducking her face into his chest before she looks back up at him. “You’re hilarious. You better text me tomorrow.”

“Okay,” he says, feeling good and daring, “and _you _better text _me _tomorrow.”

“You got it,” and she takes his face in her hands and kisses him again.

They kiss there, around the corner from the bar, only barely concealed from view by a telephone pole and the curve of the street, and to be honest, he’s not even sure how much time passes. It all feels vaguely dreamlike, having someone pursue him like this, call him hot and funny when he’s never been either, and it feels good even if he doesn’t quite believe it, even if there is someone else he’s trying not to think about. He lifts a hand to Sandy’s cheek, brushing his fingers across her cheek to remind himself there will be no scrape of close-shaved facial hair there, listening to her high lilting sigh to remind himself that it’s not the low groan he imagines, sliding his fingertips to the nape of her neck to remind himself that her hair is not short but long and silky, opening his eyes every now and then just to remind himself that she’s… she’s pretty. And she’s nice, and she likes him. She’s just… She’s not—

“Oh. So _this_ is where you were. Cool. Real fuckin’ cool.”

Richie surfaces from what feels like a deep undersea voyage, blinking lazily as he tears his lips away from Sandy’s. Eddie is standing at the mouth of the alley, his hands on his hips and his eyes more ablaze than he’s ever seen them.

“H-hey, Eds,” Richie tries, smiling weakly. “What’s—”

“Fuck off, Richie, you’re the biggest fucking asshole ever. I’ll see you in class.” And he turns to go.

Richie’s stomach drops and he knows he fucked up but his mind is still underwater, still on that time lag. “Eddie, wait— you’re leaving?”

Eddie whips his head around, his eyes still flashing even in the dim moonlight. “Oh, so you noticed.”

“Wai— Really—? Already?”

“What do you mean, ‘already’? It’s like ten-fucking-thirty.”

“It’s _what_—?”

“Yeah, maybe you would know that if you checked your fucking phone, asshole,” and Eddie is calling over his shoulder as he disappears down the street.

Immediately, Richie fumbles his phone out of his pocket, nearly letting it fall on the ground before catching it against his hip. He bends over, squinting at the screen, and his stomach drops even more precipitously when he sees **\--13 new messages--**.

**\--Spaghetti [8:04]--  
**Im here, where are you?**  
\--Spaghetti [8:09]--  
**K im looking around the bar. I dont see you yet. Are you outside?**  
\--Spaghetti [8:13]--  
**Just checked outside and didnt see you. Are you even here?

**\--Spaghetti [9:25]--  
**Please come back quick. I dont know anyone and i suck at this**  
\--Spaghetti [9:28]--  
**Apparently someone ordered shots and apparently gin is disgusting**  
\--Spaghetti [9:30]--  
**Thanks for getting me vodka and not gin dear LORD**  
\--Spaghetti [9:32]--  
**Now theyre going around saying the last time they dropped acid HELP  
**\--Spaghetti [9:37]--  
**Cool theyre doing more shots. I refuse. This sucks  
**\--Spaghetti [9:39]--**  
Can we go soon? This is worse than ann coulter  
**\--Spaghetti [9:46]--  
**This is worse than an episode of family guy  
**\--Spaghetti [10:02 (1/2)]--  
**This is worse than the da vinci code, both the novel by dan brown and  
**\--Spaghetti [10:02 (2/2)]--  
**the film  
**\--Spaghetti [10:17]--  
**WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU

“Fuck,” Richie swears, standing up abruptly, adrenaline coursing even through the haze of his buzz. “Fuck, Sandy, I have to—”

“What?”

He feels a hand on his arm and shakes it off. “I’m sorry, I’ll text you—!” and he takes off down the street after Eddie.

He hears his feet pounding on the pavement as though from a distance, the pounding of his heart only marginally closer as he flies down the side street. At the juncture with Rainbow Street, he whips his head to the right and the left, and then catches sight of a small male figure, hands stuffed in jacket pockets, booking it uphill in the direction of First Circle.

“Eddie!” His lungs are burning, he thinks, but they feel distant, too, same as the throbbing in his head to the rhythm of his shoes, and now he’s going uphill, Jesus, but he has to— “Wait up!”

“Fuck you!”

“I wish!” It slips out through his damn drunk teeth, and Richie bites his numb cheek right after, hoping that Eddie seeing him making out with a woman is enough to convince him that was just a joke. Eddie is clearly power-walking his hardest, but he’s no match for Richie’s long strides. Richie makes up the distance in the work of a moment and then he’s striding along beside him, pleading, “Eddie, look, I’m really sorry I didn’t come back, I lost track of time—”

“I don’t want to hear it, dude—”

“C’mon, man, I’m serious, I had no idea it got so late, if I had I wouldn’ta left you there—”

“Look, Richie, _you_ were the one who convinced me to come down here—”

“I know—”

“—and then as soon as I showed up, you fucking _disappeared_—”

“—I know—”

“—and I had to talk to a bunch of strangers when the only reason I came down here was because _you told me _it’d be fun, and then you fuckin’ abandoned me!”

“I _know_, Eds, I fucked up, I’m so sorry,” Richie breathes, his voice plaintive. “Do you want me to tell you I feel like shit? Because I do. I could go into great detail about how fucking shitty I feel right now.”

Eddie abruptly stops walking. He scrubs a hand down his face, sighing. “No, I don’t want to— I’m not trying to— _Ugh_.” He shakes his head, eyes shut. “I just… Richie, I have a girlfriend.”

Nauseous heat ignites in Richie’s body, his head, his palms suddenly slick with sweat, his stomach lurching in a way that’s very dangerous on the amount of booze he’s had tonight. “Wh-what do you mean?” he asks, sick.

Eddie stares at him, and is quiet for what feels like an eternity. “I _mean_,” he sighs, “I can’t be getting drunk with random girls who keep buying me shots.”

_Oh. _The buzzing heat in Richie’s brain begins to dissipate until it’s just a buzz. He realizes his hands are clenched in his jacket pockets, and he pulls them out, flexing his fingers. “Yeah, of course,” he says, nodding vaguely. “I get you.”

“Myra would be pissed if she found out.”

“Right. Makes sense.”

“At least if you’re there I can tell her it wasn’t just me and, like, five drunk girls.”

“Sure, man, I’ll keep you honest,” Richie murmurs, because the booze and the running and the emotional whiplash from the last thirty seconds are all catching up with him at once, just as his adrenaline is finally waning, and he’s losing the thread a little bit, his head swimming again. “Is this… something she worries about a lot? You cheating on her?”

Eddie frowns. “No, not that in particular, she just… worries. She said a lot of stuff when I told her I was coming here… It kind of took her by surprise, actually, we—”

“Eds,” Richie says, dizzy, “I don’t mean to interrupt, but I feel like I need to sit down. Can we pop a squat to talk or do you still, like, never want to see me again?”

“Oh, uh, I don’t…” Eddie glances down at his watch. “I mean, it’s almost eleven, and my curfew’s midnight.”

“Mine, too.” Richie’s eyes meet Eddie’s when he looks up. “I have time if you do.”

Eddie holds his gaze, his expression unreadable. “Yeah,” he says finally. “I do.”

They find the same little park where the five of them posed for a picture, overlooking the rolling hills of Amman, the twinkling lights mirroring the stars above. It’s cool and breezy, and that, plus the cold concrete bench under his thighs, helps clear Richie’s head a little. They sit and both shove their hands in the pockets of their new (old) jackets, shoulders shrugged up to their ears in the face of the chill night air. They’re far from the only people out at this time—Rainbow Street is bustling, in fact—but with their backs to the traffic and their bodies angled and bent toward each other to hear over the rattle of cars, it feels almost like they’re in their own bubble, set apart.

“So,” says Eddie, “what did you want to talk about?”

Richie shrugs, only a slight motion since his shoulders already higher than his neck. “Nothing from me, boss, but it seemed like you had something to say. I’m just here to listen.”

Eddie scoffs. “Richie Tozier? _Listen_?”

“I am capable,” Richie replies, lightly indignant.

“That remains to be seen.”

“Excuse you, I’m a great listener. I’m just an even better talker.”

“That _also_ remains to be seen.”

“Oh, ha-ha.” He pulls one side of his mouth up sardonically. “I’m serious. I’m a good listener. And good at keeping secrets, should you feel the need to divulge.”

Eddie gives him a highly skeptical look. “You? You have the biggest mouth in the northern hemisphere.”

“Yeah, but I got a strategy for keeping the secrets. You wanna know what it is?” He pauses. Eddie looks at him expectantly. “I forget ’em.”

Eddie rolls his eyes. “So you’re not actually that great of a listener, is what you’re saying.”

“Well, clearly _you’re _not a great listener, Eds, because that’s exactly the opposite of what I’ve been saying. No, I remember them, but I just don’t, like, dwell on other people’s secrets, so they’re never front of mind enough for me to blab ’em. I’ve got secrets enough of my own to worry about, and _those_ don’t ever get blabbed. They’re like the… cork. In the secrets bottle. Stopping everyone else’s from poppin’ out.”

“Weirdly poetic imagery,” mumbles Eddie.

“Thanks. I contain multitudes.”

They go quiet. The buzz in Richie’s head stops him from wanting to talk too much; the bottom half of his face still feels numb, and it’s not exactly a party so that’s subduing him more than it is egging him on. He thinks he’s made his intent to listen clear; now it’s up to Eddie.

“I didn’t tell Myra I even applied to come here.”

Richie looks at him sideways and stays quiet. Eddie glances back at him and then heaves an annoyed sigh, as though Richie is proving his point just to get on his nerves. Which is only partly true.

“I told her I applied to the international business abroad program in London, like most of the other people in our major,” he continues, “which was technically true. I just also applied here. On a whim, kind of. I don’t even really know why, I just… I had to, you know?”

Richie hums affirmatively, eyes dragging lazily over Eddie’s face, lingering over freckles and lines limned in the yellow streetlights. His expression is open, vulnerable in a way Richie has only seen once before, and never before today.

_Eddie glancing down at the jacket clutched in his soft hands. “It really looks that good?”_

“It felt like…” A beat. Eddie closes his eyes, putting a hand over them. “It felt like it was my last chance.”

_Eddie glancing down at the jacket, glancing back up at them, at Richie_

Richie’s eyebrows twitch downward. “Last chance for what?” he whispers, not even sure why he’s whispering.

_glancing down, back up, soft jacket, soft eyes, soft hands_

Eddie shakes his head, a mirthless laugh escaping his lips. “I don’t even know, that’s the fucked-up part. To do something, I guess. To do _anything_.” He pulls his hand away from his eyes and turns to Richie, and Richie realizes how close he has bent to Eddie, to hear, to _listen_, because their faces are so close that the clouds of their breaths are mingling in the night air. “Pretty stupid, right?” and he looks up at Richie from beneath his dark, troubled brow, and Richie feels his whole body go still.

_“It really looks that good?” _

_“Yeah, man.”_

“No,” he murmurs. “I don’t think so.”

Then a car horn blares, and some teenagers laugh, and Richie jerks back, remembering suddenly where they are. Rainbow Street, yes, but that’s just a word here, it doesn’t mean anything. They’re still in _Jordan_, where you can put an arm around your guy friend, you can kiss him on the cheek as a greeting, you can even hold his hand as you walk down the street, Richie’s _seen it_, but you better not fucking gaze into his eyes and wonder if he’s going to kiss you and want _so badly_ for him to kiss you right here in public, because who knows what would happen, because you know what could very well happen.

They’re in Jordan, where you _shouldn’t_ kiss a girl in public but you _can_, if you must, because she can say she doesn’t give a shit and you don’t either, really, about the social repercussions _or_ about kissing her, specifically, it’s just nice to be close to someone when the person you want to be close to is back in the bar and you’re ignoring the buzzing in your phone because it might be him but you want to take advantage of an hour, a minute, a second in which you can forget to yearn quite so much for something you know you cannot have, when being in Jordan isn’t even the reason you cannot have it.

“Jesus,” Eddie grunts, startled by the horn, too, and then chuckles at himself, turning away from Richie. “Sorry if that got weird, but you asked for it.”

“Huh? Oh.” _He means you asked for him to talk to you, not for him to kiss you, you moron. He’s not a mind-reader. _“Yeah, of course. Any time.” He gives a shaky, lopsided smile. “And it didn’t get weird. I’ve listened to much weirder.”

“Well, you do listen to Weird Al, so.”

Richie snaps his fingers, suddenly remembering. His fingers fly to the zipper and tug it down hard, though it catches on the rough metal of the old jacket, to reveal his _UHF _shirt. He grins proudly at Eddie.

Eddie rolls his eyes and laughs. “Of course you’re wearing that tonight.”

“Have you seen the movie?”

“Weird Al made a movie?”

“Yes, Weird Al made a movie. In much the same way Andy Samberg made a movie. Put it on the list.” He stands up. “What time is it?”

Eddie looks at his watch again, standing too. “Fuck. It’s like eleven-thirty already.”

“Just enough time to get home.” Richie raises a hand to wave at a taxi going by, but Eddie grabs it and pulls it down, the heat from his fingers setting Richie’s skin on fire.

“Not here,” he says, tugging Richie’s arm by the wrist and robbing him of words, “we should catch a cab at the circle. That’ll get us going the right way. C’mon.”

The two of them walk in step up to First Circle, where they post up on one of the small islands on the circle’s edge. When they hail a cab, Eddie steps forward, clearly expecting Richie to get in the back, but Richie shakes his head when Eddie turns to him.

“You should take it,” he says. “I’ll grab my own. That way we’ll both get home in time.”

“Oh.” Eddie looks taken aback, like he expected to have more time together, as though they’re not going to see each other in two days’ time, at the very most. “Well, then… thanks for listening to me ramble, tonight.”

Richie shrugs, smiling lopsidedly. “Of course. It was the least I could do after I made you come down here and then abandoned you like that.”

“It’s okay, you didn’t, I just— I maybe overreacted, seeing you—” Eddie makes a sweeping motion with his hand. “Anyway, don’t worry about it.”

“Don’t tell me what to do.”

The joke succeeds, in that it makes Eddie laugh. He opens the door to the cab and is about to get in, but then he turns back to Richie, hesitating, fixing Richie with yet another unreadable gaze.

“What’s up, Eds?”

“You look pretty.”

Richie’s brain short-circuits. His jaw works without making noise before he manages to splutter, “Whuh—”

“I said you look shitty. Goodnight, Denise!” and, laughing a little, looking pleased, Eddie falls into the front seat of the cab and, still laughing, closes the door.

Richie watches the cab pull away, and then watches three more cabs go through the circle, while he wills his heart to leave his throat, his pulse to stop racing, his stomach to settle, and when he does finally hail the next cab that comes through and directs the driver to his host family’s house, his thoughts are still so full of Eddie that this time he remembers to fasten his seatbelt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the youtube video they watch is of course [super mario frustration](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=in6rzzdgki8), one of my very favorites, which i think eddie would identify with on a deep level. oh and [here’s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1u3fGLru18) the “goodnight, denise” scene from hot rod.
> 
> thanks to @jajs as always for everything, especially for reassuring me that this fic is all right and i’m not a complete hack. (´▽`)
> 
> next time: richie shows off his skills of an artist! eddie uses his inhaler! stan gets some much-needed screen time!
> 
> Arabic glossary:  
_‘ammiya_: colloquial arabic; dialect  
_sabah al-kheri_: good morning  
_ma sha allah_: lit., god has willed it [said when expressing appreciation, joy, praise, usually as an exclamation]


	8. february i: oh it’s okay for you to say what you want from me / i believe that’s the only way for me to be / exactly what you want me to be

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title is from “handshake drugs” by wilco. tw for description of a panic attack.

**richie: **CARLA!  
**carla:** RICHIEEEEEEEEEE  
**richie: **ur online at the same time as me!  
**carla:** yay!  
**richie: **and good thing too bc I have a buuunnnnccchhh of shit to tell u  
**carla: **oh boy  
what is it  
**richie: **oh nothing new, really  
just that i am a disaster and am falling for another straight boy :D  
**carla:** richieeeeeee noooooooooooo  
**richie: **its ok i should just die of stupid any day now  
and then i wont have to worry bc ill be dead :D**  
carla:** i thought he was only 87% straight  
**richie:** oh yeah u and i havent talked in a while  
he has a gf  
**carla:** oh fuq  
**richie:** yeah  
**carla:** fuck man im sorry that really sucks  
um how r u feeling?  
**richie: **…  
who r u and what have u done with my best friend carla??  
**carla:** omg fuck u  
**richie: **asking me about my feelings???  
**carla:** S T F U  
**richie: **carla doesnt care about feelings!!  
**carla:** NO BUT RICHIE DOES AND HE IS FAR AWAY SO I CANT GET HIM DRUNK/HIGH LIKE I NORMALLY DO WHEN HES FEELING FEELINGS SO I WILL ASK INSTEAD OK???????????????/  
**richie:** lol  
**carla:** IST HAT OK WITH U??????  
**richie: **yes lmao <33  
**carla: **JESUS MARY AND JOSEPH  
**richie: **thx ur the best <333  
**carla:** ugh just tell me about ur feelings already, i only have so much emotional bandwith <3 >:[  
**richie:** ha ok ya so  
guess ill start with whats on my mind rn  
and im hungover af so sorry if it makes like less sense than usual  
**carla:** no worries im very used to hungover richie lol  
**richie: **so last night i asked him to come out to a bar with me and this girl i met yesterday and he didnt really want to go bc hes like  
idk kind of anxious about new people i guess  
**carla:** i am familiar with this concept yes  
go on  
oh dear ur typing a lot  
**richie:** but i promised i wouldnt like leave him alone or anything so he said hed come and he did but by the time he showed up i was drunk and i like dipped out right away and started making out with that girl in the alley by the bar and next thing i know its like 10:30 and hes leaving bc i fucking abandoned him for like an hour with a bunch of people he didnt know at all and i just  
i feel so guilty  
like i did the EXACT THING i said i wouldnt do  
im tryna be friends with this dude bc i cant leave him alone and then the one time i CAN forget about him for like one second im fucking up  
like i try to set up fucking rules for myself about him  
like u can bring him coffee as long as u dont buy it for him or u can touch him as long as he touches u first  
and then i fucking break them right away like what the fuck  
i just cant do anything right when it comes to him  
and i feel like shit  
**carla:** that sounds tough  
**richie:** ya it is  
a shrewd observation from the rookie carrera  
shes showing real promise, folks  
**carla:** shut up im trying i just suck at this ok??  
**richie: **:P  
**carla:** have you talked to him about it?  
**richie:** ya a little, i like  
chased after him down the street lol  
**carla:** jesus  
**richie:** ya just keeping it casual u know  
like bros do  
**carla:** lolllll  
sup bro is it cool if i chase u down and apologize for leaving u to kiss a woman bro?  
**richie:** dont make me drive to the airport and run to the gate to confess my love to u bro!  
id do it for u bro!  
**carla:** bro our friendship just means so much to me bro :’)  
*they kiss, in a bro way*  
**richie:** lol if only  
**carla:** :/ sorry if im making u yearn  
**richie:** no actually joking about it helps  
its good to take a step back and realize how fucking absurd my life is  
**carla:** :(  
whats his name again  
?  
im finna fb stalk him  
**richie:** eddie kaspbrak  
**carla:** k commencing fb stalking sequence now  
…um richie bb  
why is mr kasbrak not tagged in any of the pics u posted?  
**richie: **??  
**carla:** does he not have fb?  
**richie: **what?? no he does i tagged him when i posted the pics  
**carla:** well he aint tagged in em now booboo  
**richie: **wtf lemme look  
wow ur right what the fuck??  
**carla: **i mean technically hes tagged in one of them but its like the lamest one  
ur all just standing there looking tired af  
**richie:** k so i guess he must have untagged himself in the other pics? :/  
wow ok  
hes untagged in all the pics ben posted too  
from the scavenger hunt :///  
**carla:** fuck his profile is so private too  
ima friend him  
**richie:** NO  
**carla:** WHY NOT  
who cares itll be a funny thing!  
**richie: **BC HELL KNOW I TOLD U ABOUT HIM CARLA WTF  
**carla:** k how bout i friend ALL EVERYONE and THEN itll just be a funny thing??  
like oh richies weirdass friend from home is now commenting on all our shit how silly  
**richie: **:/ :/  
**carla:** ill be like ur little groupie  
and say how cute u look all the time and shit  
make him jealous :3  
speaking of which lets talka bout the girl u kissed? u seeing her again?  
**richie: **ya shes nice, her names sandy  
she texted me about going on a day trip this weekend, actually  
an archaeological site called umm qais  
**carla: **no fucking clue what that is but sounds good  
spend time with people other than eddie  
out of sight out of mind  
**richie: **i can try  
keeping busy: the tozier getting-over-someone strategy  
**carla:** ya if only i was there to get u drunk and smoke u up like every other time lol  
**richie:** lmao i will just have to pretend i guess  
**carla: **hahahaaaa u should put ur phone in the freezer like i did when u were getting over fuckinggg what was his name??  
**richie: **connor  
**carla:** YES connor  
man fuck that guy  
**richie: **actually woman* fuck that guy, that was the problem  
specifically his then ex-gf and now fiancee  
**carla:** ya what a fucking douchebag  
well cool bill denbrugh just accepted my friend request  
**richie:** WTF CARLA  
**carla:** u two together rn?  
say hi to him for me <3  
**richie: **dammit carla  
**carla:** one down five to go kekeke

***

The next time Richie sees Eddie is in class on Sunday morning. A new wave of guilt crashes over him when he walks in the room, nearly stopping him in the doorway as Eddie’s words echo in his ears—_oh, so _this_ is where you were, cool, real fuckin’ cool—_but he slinks in anyway and takes his seat, bleating out a sheepish _good morning._

Eddie barely glances up from his laptop. “_Sabah an-noor_.”

“W-w-what’s that?” Bill asks. When Richie looks up, he’s gesturing to a circle of pastry in front of Eddie on the table, wrapped in thin, greasy paper.

“I dunno if it has an actual name,” says Eddie with a shrug. “It’s from a bakery near our apartment. Ben calls it egg bread.”

Richie cranes his neck to get a better look, leaning his forearms on the table and coming out of his chair a little. It’s a round piece of flat bread, about the diameter of a soccer ball, with fluffy egg baked directly into the top, and it must still be warm because Richie catches a whiff of the yeasty, salty smell of baked bread—

_Grrrrrrrrr…_

Richie freezes, eyes going wide as Eddie looks up and meets his gaze for the first time since Friday night.

Eddie raises an eyebrow. “Was that your fucking stomach?”

“Nope, just a chest-burster,” Richie quips weakly. His stomach makes itself known again with another, slightly softer _grrr…_

Eddie snorts. “It sounds angry.”

“If you actually got up when your _f-first _alarm went off,” says Bill wryly, opening his laptop, “you could eat b-b-breakfast with the rest of the family and not have to run out the d-door every day.”

Richie sits back down, his stomach feeling empty and cavernous. “But alas, my sleep habits prevent me from being anything other than the harried, idiot dad in a Kellogg’s commercial.”

“It’s more than just your sleep habits,” says Eddie, and Richie laughs at that more than he should because he’s still feeling guilty and awkward, and then Manal enters the room with her signature chime of _Sabah al-kheir, _**students, how are you?**, and the day proceeds as normal.

The next day, for all intents and purposes, is normal, too, although Richie can’t shake the feeling that he and Eddie are dancing around each other more than usual. Or, more precisely, like _Eddie_ is now doing the dancing. In the breaks between classes, he doesn’t wait for Richie to follow him into the lounge to get a packet of Nescafe, and at lunch, he doesn’t throw himself down beside Richie on the loveseat to make fun of whatever he’s watching on YouTube. Instead, he sits in the armchair, glaring at his MSA textbook as he scribbles in it and sighing balefully when Bev sits next to Richie and they warble through a nostalgic rewatch of “Chocolate Rain.” It all makes Richie feel even guiltier and more awkward, because he feels like Eddie’s waiting for him to say something and all he can think to say is _Sorry_.

By Tuesday, Richie is almost relieved to have a morning that doesn’t prominently feature Eddie Kaspbrak and Richie’s lingering guilt. By the time he’s riding the elevator up to the AmmanAbroad offices, he’s actually excited about enriching some elementary kids’ lives with arts and crafts.

“_Sabah al-kheir_, Ritchee!” Diyala, the AmmanAbroad receptionist, greets him from the front desk, shouldering her purse. “_Jahiz_?”

“As _jahiz _as I’ll ever be,” he answers with a grin, leaning an elbow on the tall desk surface. “Stan here already?”

“In the lounge, getting the supplies.”

As if on cue, Stan appears from the hallway, carrying several bags filled with construction paper, markers, safety scissors, and glue. He greets Richie with a nod as Richie rushes forward to grab a few of the bags.

“Did you remember your passport?” Stan asks, ever businesslike. They’re supposed to be renewing their visas after they all get back from volunteering.

“Yep,” says Richie, patting his backpack. “My host mama reminded me on my way out, actually. She’s so fucking sweet and, like, _motherly_, I feel like I’m living in _Leave It to Beaver_.”

Stan gives a half-smile, but his eyes are strangely sad. “Yeah, I remember Bill saying something similar, last semester.”

Richie and Stan catch a cab with Diyala to the school, which is in West Amman, the old part of the city. Because Stan and Richie are doing arts and crafts, the volunteering organization elected to send them only to girls’ schools. However, because they are two strange, adult(ish) men, they need a Jordanian to vouch for them, and Diyala offered to join them. She’s slender and bubbly, always impeccably made up beneath her pinned floral hijabs, and smilingly refuses to do any of the linguistic heavy-lifting for them, happy to watch them stammer through conversations with teachers and principals until they communicate their purpose at the school.

The principal at this school is delighted to have them—which is a welcome change from the last one, who seemed very confused about the two American boys towing bags of paper and Elmer’s glue—and ushers them to a fourth-grade classroom, the stone hallways echoing loudly with the shouts and laughter of children.

A few minutes of additional explanation later, Stan stands at the front of the room, ramrod straight and spotless in his light blue button-down, and clears his throat politely. The girls quiet down slightly but are still giggling when Stan starts the introductions in his melodious _‘ammiya_.

Stan and Bill are both light-years ahead of Richie in _‘ammiya_, or at least it feels that way. Even so, Bill’s is rough-hewn and clunky, and though he doesn’t stutter when he speaks Arabic, he’s not exactly fluent. Richie can detect the same issues that he himself struggles with, tripping over the emphatic letters, leaning hard on _um_s and _ah_s. Most of all, it still sounds like Bill. It’s reassuring, in a way, because Richie can see himself slogging along to where Bill is by the end of the semester, just through exposure and sheer force of will.

Stan, on the other hand… When Stan speaks Arabic, his voice transforms. It no longer sounds like Stan, wry and crisp, but smooth and silky, like he’s reciting poetry, considering every word carefully as he slots it into the sentence like the perfectly fitting puzzle piece. Listening to Stan speak Arabic is like being lulled to sleep by the sound of rain—comforting, even, soft—and Richie feels like an utter caveman, slobbering and grunting, in comparison.

“**_Good morning, students_**,” Stan says, tones deep and dulcet as he flawlessly uses the feminine plural word for students, which Richie knows he would have fucked up. “**_My name is Stan…_**”

Richie belatedly realizes he’s left an expectant opening for him. “Oh, uh, _ismi Richie_.” Some of the girls giggle at him, and he flashes an apologetic smile at Stan.

“**_Today, Richie and I are going to show you how to make animals out of—_**” and here, Richie assumes Stan uses the words for _toilet paper rolls and construction paper_, because he knows the project they’re doing but he couldn’t describe it in Arabic if you paid him. At Stan’s gesture, Richie, with a Vanna White flourish, holds up the examples Stan made with his volunteering partner last semester: a smiling bear and a severe-looking owl with a white belly, both cute and well-made. A few of the kids whisper or hum at the sight.

Two weeks ago, the first time Stan and Richie volunteered together, all they did was show these examples, and the girls were a little lost when it came to make their own. This time, Stan suggested they provide a demonstration first, and Richie was happy to take center stage, although Stan vetoed his request to put beefy arms on any of his creations.

“**_Richie is going to demonstrate and then you can try yourselves. The first step is to choose an animal._**_ **Students**_,” Stan says, “**_which animal do you want Richie to make?_**”

They all start shouting at once, and Richie realizes how much he sucks at animal words. Fortunately, the girls’ teacher, who had been chatting in the corner with Diyala, steps forward and reminds them to raise their hands. Stan calls on the first girl to raise hers, and she shouts, “_Assad!_”

Richie blinks, briefly concerned that he’ll have to create a toilet-paper-roll version of the president of Syria, before Stan repeats, “Ah_, assad. **Do you know what **assad **is in English**_?”

“Lion!” a different girl shouts.

“Lion, _aywa_.” Stan nods. “**_And what color paper should Richie use_**?”

Richie is hoping for something exciting, like pink or electric blue, but the girls choose yellow for him, and then he’s off to the races. Stan feeds him instructions in Arabic that Richie _mostly _understands, and Richie carries them out with dramatic gestures and exaggerated facial expressions, furrowing his brow in concentration, pointing his finger to the ceiling when he gets a bright idea—just generally hamming it up until he has the whole classroom giggling.

“**_Now we’re going to make the eyes— _**Oh.” Stan stops short, and Richie jerks his head up, furtive, in the middle of scrawling on some wonky eyes with the brown felt-tipped marker he has. A couple girls giggle expectantly as Stan clears his throat, very teacher-like. “**_Normally we make the eyes with white paper, but_**—may I?**_—Richie has already drawn his_**.” He holds up the wobbly, cross-eyed lion, and the class bursts into laughter.

“_Ma sha allah_,” says Stan, smiling and handing it back to Richie. “**_A very handsome lion_**.”

“_Shukran_,” Richie responds primly, earning another wave of giggles.

After the demonstration is over, Stan and Richie move around the room, providing help as much as they can. A lot of the girls make a point of showing him their much better-made creations, but Richie is sincerely touched when one of the girls shows him that she made a lion, too, and it’s just as cross-eyed as his. At the end of their two hours, Diyala takes a picture of Stan and Richie with the whole class, holding up the animals they made.

When Richie and Stan get back to the offices, Saleh tells them that Bev, Ben, and Bill have already returned and are picking up some food for everyone, and they’re just waiting for Eddie and Mike. Richie throws himself down in the armchair and flops a leg over one side, flipping idly through the reading for his Contemporary Islamic Thought class, growing increasingly dismayed at the length and single-spacing.

“Have you done all the reading for Dr. Amer’s class?” he mumbles to Stan.

“_Aywa_, took me like two hours over the weekend.”

“He gives us too damn much,” Richie groans, throwing it on the table and letting his head loll back on his neck dramatically. “I think my honeymoon period is over, Saleh! Over!”

Saleh laughs from his desk in the corner. “Now it’s just a marriage,” he says.

Then Richie hears loud laughter and footsteps in the hallway, and a moment later Eddie pushes open the door to the lounge, still calling something over his shoulder to the person in the hallway behind him, a soccer ball tucked under his arm. His face is flushed and beaming, his red t-shirt damp and sticking to his stomach with sweat. Richie nearly falls out of his chair.

“_Ahlan_! You’re back!” Saleh greets him amiably. “How was soccer?”

“Great!” Eddie exclaims, his smile wide and sincere, without a hint of the guardedness or uncertainty of the past two days. It makes Richie’s heart clench hard and shiny, like a diamond.

“Eddie was MVP,” says Mike, clapping Eddie on the shoulder as he enters the room after him.

Eddie sends another thousand-watt grin Mike’s way and flops on the couch, his hair tousled. He glows under the praise, cheeks stained pink and eyes warm and sparkling when they meet Richie’s across the table. It sends a jolt straight to his spine, making him scramble to sit up straight and not like a total buffoon.

“Oh?” asks Stan, seemingly immune to the effects of Eddie’s effervescence, a word that Richie didn’t truly know the meaning of until just now. “How so?”

Richie’s tongue finally unsticks from the roof of his mouth, and he asks hoarsely, “Yeah, Eds, did you teach them how to bend it like Beckham?”

“No, I taught them how to make outdated cultural references,” Eddie shoots back, grinning contagiously when Richie laughs.

“He was all over the field, keeping up with the kids,” says Mike, taking a seat beside Stan. There’s a dark crescent of sweat around his collar. “I haven’t run that much since I was trying to catch some escaped sheep on the farm. I could barely keep up.”

“I love when you talk farm to us, Mikey,” Richie says, batting his eyelashes. Mike winks.

“Did you let the kids win, Eddie?” Stan asks.

Before Eddie can answer, Richie, caught up in his infectious euphoria, blows a raspberry in the air. “Eddie Spaghetti? Let someone win? There’s no way.”

“They’re kids,” says Stan.

“Hey, this is the guy who chewed me out for slowing us down in a fucking scavenger hunt. Dude is ruthless.” Richie looks to Eddie, grinning. “C’mon, Eds, tell us. Didja let the kiddos win at the ball-kicking game?”

Eddie sighs, only barely able to school the smile off his face. “First of all, Mike and I were on opposite teams; it’s not like it was two adults against twenty kids.”

“Uh-huh…”

“And second of all, if you must know,” he goes on, amusement creeping into his tone, “I did not _let _them win. Mike’s team won fair and square.”

Richie’s grin spreads. “Despite your best efforts, I bet.”

Eddie rolls his eyes, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Well, I mean, _yeah_, I’m not going to not try my best just because I’m playing against _children_—”

Richie gestures triumphantly. “You see, Stanley? Ruthless! Totally without ruth. Not an ounce of ruth to be found in this guy.” Stan waves a hand dismissively.

“Hey, don’t talk about me like I’m not here, dipshit!” Eddie’s frowning but his eyes are shining nonetheless. He brushes at some hair that has flopped across his forehead as he leans across the coffee table toward Richie. “What the hell am I supposed to do? Tie my shoelaces together as a handicap? I had like six inches on those kids!”

“Yeah, and you think you’d go easy on ’em, given you finally found a demographic that could make you feel tall.”

“Oh, please,” Eddie snorts. “Get some new material, Tozier. I know you’re grasping when you go for my height.”

“Okay, _Kaspbrak_, how about I tell you all about how your mom was grasping for my _length_ last night?”

“Sure, grasping like a blind person, maybe, because your ‘length’ is so microscopic it can’t be seen with the naked eye.”

“A lot more was naked than just her eye, I’ll tell you what!”

“Oh, fuck off,” Eddie laughs, shooting the soccer ball from his chest at Richie.

Richie lets out an exaggerated _oof! _as it hits him in the stomach and clutches a hand over it, gasping. “A scratch, a scratch! Marry, ’tis enough. Where is my page?” He leans over, eyes squeezed shut dramatically, groping in Stan’s direction. “Go, villain, fetch a surgeon! A plague o’ both your houses!”

Through one cracked eyelid, Richie sees Stan purse his lips. “Please don’t bring me into this. I did not audition to be… who? Mercutio?”

“No, _I’m_ Mercutio. You would be my nameless page.” He grins. “And Eddie is Tybalt, which is honestly just type-casting.” He one-arm chucks the ball back at Eddie, who catches it easily, smiling.

“How so?” Eddie asks.

“Because you’re vengeful, short-tempered, and would love to stab me with a sword.” Richie laughs as Eddie reels his arm back and hurls the ball at his head, plucking it from the air just before it goes crashing into Saleh’s desk.

“Hey, how about you _don’t _throw the soccer ball in the room with all the computers?” Mike chuckles, holding an arm in front of Stan’s laptop. Richie obligingly tucks the ball between his ankles. “How did volunteering go for you guys?”

“Great,” says Richie, fishing in his backpack. “I made this.” He proudly holds up his toilet paper tube lion.

Eddie leans across the table and holds a hand out, palm flat, and Richie obligingly places it there. Eddie peers at it, brow furrowed. “What is it supposed to be? An old banana?”

Stan coughs loudly in a way that sounds suspiciously like laughter.

“It’s a lion!” Richie exclaims, indignant.

Eddie gives him a blank look. “You’re fucking with me.”

“I am not!” Richie leans over, pointing. “See? Those are its eyes, and its whiskers…”

“And this? This obvious banana stem at the end here?”

“That’s its tail!”

_Pf-ff-ff_ escapes Eddie’s lips, and he tightens his upward-curling mouth. “If this is a lion,” he says, pointing to one large brown marker blob, his voice wavering just a little with ill-concealed laughter, “then what the fuck is _this_?”

Richie draws himself up, scraping together every ounce of artistic pomposity he can, and says imperiously: “The shading of its flank.”

Eddie bends his head forward and then tosses it back, pent-up laughter bursting through his lips in harsh, deep-throated wheezes. He plasters a hand over his face, his shoulders shaking, and just when he finally seems to get a hold of himself, he opens his eyes and looks at the lion (it _is_ a lion) and starts laughing all over again. And Richie finds himself laughing, too, almost giddy, because it’s Stage Three of Eddie’s Dumb Movie Laugh™: The Richie Tozier Edition.

“What’s so f-funny?” Bill asks, leading Bev and Ben into the study abroad lounge, a bag of Styrofoam takeaway containers in his hands.

“Look at this.” Eddie, still laughing, holds up Richie’s lion. “What does this look like to you? Richie says it’s a—”

“Don’t give it away!” Stan interjects with a wry smile. “I want to hear their guesses.”

“They’re not going to be very interesting guesses, _Stanley_, because they will all immediately grasp my photorealistic art, unlike you, you Philistines.”

Bill, Bev, and Ben gather around the tube, peering at it.

“A duck?”

“A b-b-bumblebee?”

“A… lion?”

Richie whoops, holding up his arms like he just made a field goal. “Haystack, you beautiful animal! I always knew you and I were on the same wavelength! See, Eds? Someone else recognized it for what it is.”

Eddie rolls his eyes good-naturedly, handing the tube back to Richie. “I still say it looks more like an old banana than a lion,” he insists, unable to hold in another snicker as Richie shoves it into the pocket of his hoodie. “‘The shading on its flank,’ Jesus. And you call me a nerd.”

They all eat quickly and then Bill, who didn’t leave Jordan for the holidays, waves goodbye as the rest of them gather their passports and head to the ministry building. While they’re in the cab, Richie gets a buzz on his phone and twists to pull it out.

“You get a text, Tozier?” Bev teases, pressed up right against him so she must have felt the vibration, too. “So popular.”

“Yeah, I’m so popular I only know like ten people in this whole country,” he jokes, unlocking the screen. “Which of the Losers in the other cab do you think couldn’t wait five minutes to talk to me?”

**\--Sandy [1:13]--  
**Hey! Hope ur volunteering went well. :)

“Who was it?” Eddie laughs, turning around in the front seat. “I’m betting it was Mike, checking in because they lost sight of us for a split second.”

Richie swallows, that guilty feeling making an appearance for the first time that day. “Uh, it was Sandy, actually,” he mumbles.

Eddie blinks. “Oh.”

“Tell her we say hi,” says Bev.

“I’ll text her later, actually,” Richie says, shoving the phone back in his pocket and grinning. He puts on his Crotchety Old Man Voice, screwing up his face. “Don’t want to be one’a them millennials, always on their dang phones when they could be making a face-to-face connection.”

“Yeah, and you already made a face-to-face connection with Sandy, anyway,” jokes Ben from Bev’s other side. Eddie’s head whips back to face forward again.

Bev gasps and turns to Richie, eyes wide. “Richie, you didn’t tell me about _that_!”

“Now, ya see, young Benjamin!” Richie goes on, still in his Voice. “This is just what they’re talkin’ about on my programs, the goll-durn millennials and their hook-up culture. In _my _day, the boys didn’t kiss and tell. It might ruin a young lady’s reppitashun, ya see—”

Richie is able to fend off Bev’s insistent questioning with his Voice for the short remainder of the ride, and it’s not until the four of them spill out of the taxi at the Interior Ministry building that he even thinks to wonder how Ben found out about him kissing Sandy. The scenario unfurls itself before him almost instantly: Ben and Eddie are roommates, Eddie comes home late, Ben asks what kept him, Eddie says, “Oh, Richie abandoned me to make out with some girl, you know, just like he said he wouldn’t,” and bada-bing, bada-boom, there you have it, folks, yet another person learns that Richie Tozier’ll fuck off to suck face in an alleyway if he gets a few drinks in him.

Two weeks ago, Richie was hanging his hat on the word _friend _to define his relationship with Eddie, and he can’t even fucking do that right.

At least Eddie’s astoundingly good mood doesn’t seem too dampened by the reminder of Richie’s shittiness. He’s almost jittery as they exit the cab, stretching his arms across his chest, pulling a foot back behind him.

“What?” he asks, catching Richie eyeing him. “I actually ran today, unlike some people.”

“I run every day, Eds. I run my mouth.”

Eddie snorts and then bends forward, reaching for his toes, and Richie very heroically only looks at his ass once. The guilt won’t allow him to look more than that.

The ministry building is large and rectangular, made of smooth yellow stone like nearly all buildings in Amman, the exterior surrounded in planters with bushy coniferous shrubs sprouting from them. The inside is cool and dimly lit, with a row of windows serviced by ministry workers in dark suits and several chairs pressed up against the wall. Richie takes a seat, and Eddie sits next to him.

Saleh passes out forms and pens to all of them. “First, you’ll have to fill out these forms. They’ll call you up one at a time and ask why you’re extending your visa. I can come up with you, if you would like me to talk to them.”

At this, a nearly tangible sense of relief spreads through the group.

“After that, they’re going to draw some blood for a panel,” Saleh goes on, and immediately Richie senses Eddie stiffen next to him.

“So, needles?” Ben asks, a little nervously, glancing from Saleh to Stan, who has been through the visa renewal song and dance before.

“Yes, needles,” says Stan stoically.

Eddie’s foot starts tapping.

“Ugh, I hate needles,” Bev groans.

Mike gives her a sympathetic smile. “What are they testing for, Saleh?”

“Hepatitis, tuberculosis, and HIV.”

Richie hears Eddie draw in a sharp breath and glances at him. His face is pale, his lips pressed together so tightly they’re turning white.

“You afraid of needles, Eds?” he whispers.

Eddie’s eyes flash. “No. Fuck you.”

The venom in his voice makes Richie’s eyebrows shoot up his forehead. “Whoa there, killer, I wasn’t—”

“Does someone have a problem with needles?” Saleh asks, his thick eyebrows furrowed. Eddie’s head jerks downward, his knee bouncing now.

“Uh, nope!” Richie chirps, plastering on a smile for Saleh, his voice high and thin. “Nope, just some brave folks, not scared’a nothing _no_ way, some GD, uh, _Gryffindors_ right here. Or Eddie is, anyway, I bet. Am I right, Eds?”

When he turns to him, Eddie’s still silent, still staring down at his jumping knees, his fists clenched on the arms of the chair. Richie decides to keep babbling.

“I’m just saying, I bet that’s what you always get on those online quizzes, huh, man? I got Gryffindor once, but I rigged it, I said my friends all think I’m, quote, _valiant_—which, like, oh wow I fucking _wonder_, like what the fuck, that can’t be a valid measure, it’s almost like fucking anyone can make an online quiz—but my friends definitely wouldn’t say I’m _intellectual_ and there was no option for _annoying as fuck_, but I _had_ just taken a prop fighting class and I was working on some pretty sick moves with a fake sword so I figured _valiant _was the closest, even though most other times I get Hufflepuff or Slytherin, which is bullshit when clearly I have the Harry Potter look _down_—”

Eddie doesn’t look up but does huff out a shaky laugh. “And you call _me _a_—_ nerd,” he sighs, uneven, pausing to suck in more air.

“Eddie, are you okay?” It’s Mike, leaning around Richie’s shoulder, and Richie can hear the concern in his voice. “Is there anything—”

“Yeah, I just— need some air, I think,” Eddie breathes, and finally he raises his head. His eyes bore into Richie’s, dark and frantic in his pale face. “Uh, could you—?”

“Yeah, okay, yeah, of course.” Richie’s head is reeling as he stands up, grasping Eddie’s sweaty palm in his and pulling him up after. “We’re gonna go outside for a bit, all right? Cool.” He doesn’t wait for Saleh’s response before shoving the doors open and drawing Eddie through behind him, hearing his breathing hitch.

Richie pulls Eddie around the corner from the front door, out of sight of the people milling around the front steps, and makes a beeline for a shaded planter with a wide, stone ledge. Eddie sinks wordlessly down onto it, his breath rattling now. Richie rubs one hand across Eddie’s back, over and over, feeling helpless, and doesn’t even realize he’s still holding Eddie’s slick palm in the other until he distantly registers the pain of Eddie’s crushing grip.

“Hey, man, are you okay?” he asks. It comes out breathy and scared. “Because you’re looking a little like you’re gonna turn into a werewolf or something, like maybe I should see if there’s a Potionsmaster or some shit in there who can fix you that potion Snape did for—” He shakes his head, stopping himself. “_Fuck_, I really have Harry Potter on the fucking brain, I’m sorry, what can I do to actually help? Can I get you something?”

Eddie shakes his head, wheezing. “Just shut up— and keep talking—”

Richie blinks, wanting to let that go, but…

“Mm, mm mmm mmm mm mmmm—”

“Oh my _god_—” Eddie groans, but he’s glaring at Richie and not at his knees for the first time since they came outside. “You’re fucking insufferable— You know what I— fucking meant—”

Richie huffs out a laugh, smiling uneasily. “Right, Eds, you got it, one motor mouth revvin’ right up.” He takes a deep breath and lets fly the first thing that comes to mind: “_Way back when I was just a little-bitty boy, livin’ in a box under the stairs in the corner of the basement of the house half a block down the street from Jerry’s Bait Shop_—”

But Eddie’s breath hitches again, loud and rasping, his free hand clasping over his chest, fisted in the material of his shirt, and Richie leans his head down, starting his hand rubbing circles over Eddie’s spine again.

“What— was that?”

“‘Albuquerque’ by Weird Al. It’s like ten minutes long, I memorized it in seventh grade. Not a fan?”

Eddie rolls his eyes, and Richie can feel his ribs jerking, straining to suck in more air. “Say— real stuff— Don’t _recite_—”

“Eddie, man,” Richie says, his voice low and entreating, “I’ll do whatever the fuck you want me to do, but please tell me what’s going on, I’m kind of freaking out right now—”

“I can’t— It’s hard to— breathe—” Eddie’s voice cuts off on a sharp, shuddering intake, and his knee bounding.

Richie’s stomach drops, his mouth dry. “_Fuck_, uh…” His voice is hoarse; he swallows, his eyes darting over Eddie’s hunched figure, taking in his gritted jaw, his fluttering chest, his bone-white knuckles grasping just above his black fanny pack…

Fuck, his fanny pack.

“Is it your asthma?” Richie tries, almost pleading. “An asthma attack? Do you need your inhaler?”

Eddie’s hand clutches Richie’s even tighter as he jerks his head up. His pupils are huge. “No, it’s— I don’t—”

Then, Saleh is there, and Mike, and Stan, who takes a seat on Eddie’s other side but keeps his distance. Eddie abruptly releases Richie’s hand, which smarts painfully as he draws it back into his lap, blood rushing back into his throbbing fingertips.

Mike sinks to his knees in front of Eddie, his gaze concerned. “What’s wrong, Eddie?” he asks, voice even.

“He says he can’t breathe,” Richie blurts out, helpless, feeling Eddie’s fluttering ribs under the palm he still has on his back. Wheezing, breaths harsh and intermittent, drawn tight up through his lungs like a washboard, rattling—

Then Stan’s dark eyes take hold of Richie’s, and the intensity he reads there steadies him, somehow.

Mike glances once at Richie, sympathetic, and then places strong hands on Eddie’s knees, looking up into his pale face, his deep brown eyes meeting Eddie’s darting pupils, catching them in their potent gravity. “Eddie, we’re here,” he murmurs. “Where are you?”

“I’m at— the fucking— Jordan— visa office—” Eddie gasps, breaths coming faster now, faster than when it was just the two of them. “That’s— the _problem_—”

“Okay, so let’s not focus on where you are,” Mike murmurs, unshaken. “Let’s focus on your breathing. Why don’t you match mine? First let’s breathe out fully…”

Richie feels Eddie try to match Mike’s breath, his own a ragged imitation of Mike’s obvious, deep, open-mouthed breathing, but after a few futile seconds, Eddie squeezes his eyes shut, shaking his head, shoving desperately at Mike’s hands on his knees. “I’m not— I can’t—”

Mike sits back on his knees, holding his hands up disarmingly. “It’s okay, Eddie, I won’t touch you, I just thought if I could help you focus on your breathing—”

“_No_, you don’t fucking get it—” Furious, gasping words are overflowing breathlessly from Eddie’s mouth, Richie can feel him shaking, hot with anger now— “How am I supposed to focus on my _fucking_ breathing when it feels like I’m having a fucking heart attack, Mike?? I’d like to see you fucking try to focus on your fucking breathing when—”

“Should I call an ambulance?” Saleh asks, his face a mask of horror.

The fire punches out of Eddie with his breath, Richie feels it, and he begins trembling almost violently. “No,” he chokes, wheezing, clutching again at his chest. “_No_—”

“Eddie,” Stan murmurs, his voice steady and his face grave. “Listen to me. I’m going to take everyone back inside and leave you and Richie here for two minutes, okay? Does that sound good? You can just nod, don’t talk.”

Eddie nods helplessly.

“Okay, and at the end of the two minutes, someone will come back out and see if you want to go to the hospital then, all right?”

Eddie nods, eyes clenched shut, and lets out a crackling sob. Richie’s heart twists painfully.

“Stan, I don’t think he’s gonna want to go to the hospital—” he starts, warningly.

“I don’t think he’ll need to,” Stan answers steadily, eyes on Eddie, “but I’ll leave it up to him. All right, Eddie? No one is going to make you go to the hospital if you don’t want to.” At the word _hospital_, Eddie lets out another whimper. “I’ll be back in two minutes.” Stan leans toward him, and Richie hears him whisper something indistinct in Eddie’s ear, something that makes Eddie nod strongly.

And then, true to his word, Stan herds Mike and a deeply concerned Saleh out of sight around the corner, so that Richie is alone again with shuddering, choking Eddie.

“Hey,” Richie tries, voice quivering. “Two minutes. I can get through one-fifth of ‘Albuquerque’ in that time.”

Eddie just wheezes, beyond words.

“Or— but you said no reciting.” Richie feels like he’s teetering on the edge of madness, his head whirling, his hand on Eddie’s back still rubbing in mindless circles. “Okay, fine, yes, I can do that, I do that every goddamn day.” He grits his teeth in frustration. “So why is it that the one time someone actually _needs_ me to do it I can’t think of anything except for Harry _fucking _Potter?”

Why the fuck did _Stan_ leave and let _Richie_ stay? Did he think Richie could help at all?

But the seconds are ticking, Richie can hear them. They sound like _wheeze, gasp— wheeze, gasp_—

“Okay, I can talk about, uh…” Richie’s grasping, eyes darting. _Trees, shade, sky_. “Us?” _Wheeze, gasp._ “The Losers. _Nadi al-Fashileen._ I can talk about us, Eds, think about us.”

_Wheeze, gasp. _A hammering heart beat under a sweaty palm.

“E-everyone’s pretty great, huh? Like fucking Mike. What a guy, am I right? Like I get you got pissed at him, I woulda been mad at him, too, probably, but that’s the kinda guy he is, you can scream at him for trying to help and he’ll just apologize. He wouldn’t even think of holding it against you, you know, don’t even worry about it.”

_Wheeze— wheeze— _Eddie gulps for air, an uneasy, rattling noise escaping his throat.

Richie freezes. “Should I keep going?”

The seconds stretch. How many are left?

But Eddie nods.

Richie plunges on. “And Stan… Guy knows how to make an exit, doesn’t he? Doesn’t overstay his welcome, our Staniel, no sirree. And Ben and Bev stayed inside, didn’t even come out. I bet Stan told ’em to stay away, probably didn’t want to mob you. He’s a smart cookie. And Ben, ol’ Haystack, you know he wouldn’t hurt a fly, and Bev— well, she’d hurt a fly if it looked at you wrong, you bet, but otherwise she’d just try to party with the fly, why the hell not. And Bill had the good manners not to even come to this at all, so I bet he’s your fucking favorite right now, isn’t he?”

_Wheeze… gasp…_ and Eddie shakes his head at him, maybe remembering when Richie let slip that Eddie was _his _favorite in the hotel buffet. The memory makes Richie’s heart flutter, thinking how quickly Eddie burrowed his way into his chest and carved out a space just for him.

“And then there’s…” Richie swallows, his heart beginning to pound “…you and me.”

_Sigh…_

A sigh? Richie falters, the sounds of Eddie’s breathing almost deafening. He’s still shaking a little under Richie’s hand, back to drawing in short gulps of air in that slower _wheeze, gasp _rhythm, but that was a sigh, right, when Richie mentioned the two of them? He’s made Eddie sigh plenty of times before, in exasperation, in annoyance, but this one sent a shiver down Richie’s spine and he’s not sure if that’s good or bad.

Regardless, he doesn’t have the time to think about it. He has to say something. Eddie asked him to keep talking, so by god, that’s what he’s gonna do. But what to say? He has so much bottled up and nothing that can be spilled out. He can wax philosophical about the other Losers and be glad of it, but with Eddie it means too much, feels too real. He can let a few things slip through here and there, like letting the air out of the pinched neck of a balloon to hear it squeal and fart—a joke, when it’s paltry and pulled tight, delivered for effect—but now, when Eddie _wants _him to talk and keep talking and not stop… What does he possibly have to say?

But he does have something. His hand throbs again from Eddie squeezing it like a vice, and he thinks of that text from Sandy, of Eddie whipping his head to face forward, of Eddie saying the words _you fuckin’ abandoned me_, and his throat goes dry, and he knows what he has to say but goddamn it does he need a running start.

“And then there’s just you and me,” he croaks, heart pounding, “and, well, you know what I’m like, so there’s no, there’s no need— Uh, people are supposed to like to talk about themselves, right? Welp, not me. That’s a hard pass from Richie Tozier, you _are _the weakest link, goodbye. But I can talk about you, I suppose, because you’re like— the opposite of me, Eds.” He takes a deep breath, feeling Eddie twitch under his hand. “You’re smart and driven and funny and— and you’re always yourself, that’s… that’s what I like most about you, I guess, because, ha, I’m never myself, if I can help it. That’s why I’m in theater, you know. Best way to avoid being yourself? Be other people!”

He laughs darkly, kicking himself because Eddie’s breathing is becoming choppy again, he’s gulping again, but he can’t stop. “And hey, wouldja look at that, I _am _talking about myself after all. Fuck, I can never just be—” he sighs, and Eddie wheezes “—_consistent_, can I? I can’t fucking follow through on any goddamn thing I say, just like I did to you this weekend, and—” and here it is, his hand clenching and releasing in Eddie’s shirt, feeling his shoulders flex “—and I have to say it, Eds, I have to tell you, I still feel like a complete piece of shit for what I did to you, Eddie, I’m the shittiest fucking friend ever, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry I abandoned you like that, I won’t ever do anything like that again, I just—”

“_Fuck it_—” Eddie suddenly gasps, screwing his eyes shut and shaking his head almost violently. He rips the zipper open on his fanny pack and plunges his hand in, drawing out his inhaler and plastering it to his mouth, triggering it like it’s a revolver.

The effect is nearly instantaneous. His breathing evens, his heart rate slows, the trembling softens and smooths with one last heaving sigh. Eddie leans forward, his elbows on his knees, and presses his face in his hands.

Richie withdraws his hand from Eddie’s back, his palm cold and damp from sweat—his or Eddie’s, he doesn’t know. In the stretching silence, the thought rises, unbidden, bewildered:

_But he said it wasn’t asthma. _

The thought is so mystifying that it’s almost dizzying, and Richie tries to put it out of his mind for now. He swallows dryly, tilting his head. Tentatively, he whispers, “Uh… Eds?”

“Don’t call me Eds.”

It’s hoarse but steady, a sharp contrast to the relieved giggle that bursts through Richie’s teeth. Slowly, Eddie cranes his neck to smile lopsidedly at him over his shoulder, wan but wry.

“Fuck, man,” Richie chuckles, shivering suddenly. Nerves. “That punchline’s stale as hell. And your delivery sucks.”

Eddie lolls his head down between his arms, chuckling, too. As he does so, Richie catches sight of Stan peeking his head around the corner and shoots him a thumbs up. Stan returns it wordlessly and disappears again.

Eddie lets out a vague groan and raises his head, resting his chin in one hand so his fingers cover his mouth. His eyes are bleary as he looks askance at Richie. “Sorry about all of this,” he mumbles.

Richie blinks, baffled. Eddie just went through a— well, whatever the fuck that was, and _he’s _apologizing to _Richie_? “Uh, I think that’s supposed to be _my_ line, man,” he snorts. “I’m pretty sure I didn’t help, like, at all. I was one step away from running around like a chicken with its head cut off.” He laughs cheerlessly at himself. “Although at least a chicken with its head cut off probably wouldn’t be ranting about Harry Potter.”

Eddie doesn’t say anything. His brown eyes regard Richie wearily but unwaveringly, his eyebrows knitted together. It’s making Richie squirm. He looks down at his throbbing hand, cradled in his lap.

“You are a good friend, you know.”

Richie’s head jerks up. Eddie’s eyes widen briefly at the suddenness of the movement.

Richie swallows dryly, face hot. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Eddie sits back, letting the hand fall from his mouth. He’s chewing his lip, not looking at Richie now. “You were trying your best, even though… I mean, you clearly had no fucking clue what to do, don’t get me wrong.” Eddie gives a definitive, horizontal slice with one palm-down hand, making Richie laugh. Eddie chuckles a little himself, color returning now to his reddening cheeks. “But you listened. I said I wanted air, you took me outside; I said keep talking, you kept talking. That—” He draws in a breath, smooth and strong this time, and meets Richie’s gaze again from under dark lashes. “That means a lot.”

Their faces are close again, like in the park on Rainbow Street, but in the daytime Richie can make out the brush of freckles across Eddie’s tanned cheeks, the dark, defiant hairs sprouting out of line with his eyebrows, the golden flecks of his eyes that shine even in the shade, and he feels a tug in his stomach, a tingle in his throbbing hand to reach up and cup Eddie’s flushed cheek in his hot palm and tell him he’s his, that however he wants him, however he needs him, that’s how he wants to be, for as long as they know each other.

He licks his lips, clenches his itching fingers, and settles for a husky, “I’m glad,” instead.

Eddie’s gaze lingers on Richie’s face for a moment more before he looks down, wringing his hands in his lap, and Richie can see the dull aluminum of the inhaler peeking out of the unzipped fanny pack.

“But, uh, if I can ask a question?” he asks slowly, and Eddie meets his gaze uneasily. “You said you didn’t want the inhaler, but when you used it, it fixed it all like that.” He snaps his fingers, then opens his hand palm up, letting the question remain unspoken.

Eddie is worrying his bottom lip again now, teeth tearing at the thin skin, for several seconds. At last, he sighs, “Yeah, it’s, uh… kind of a long story.”

“You don’t have to tell me…”

“No, I—” Eddie lifts a hand, mollifying. His eyes are tired. “I will, I don’t mind, it’s just— maybe some other time?”

“Yeah, yeah, of course.” Richie gives his head a little shake, feeling stupid. “You’re right, it’s not really the venue for… I’m sorry for even asking.”

“No, it’s fine, really. You’re right, it does help, and right away. It’s just…” He sighs again, deep and dark, his eyebrows bowed upward. “I wanted to not need it, here,” he says, and it sounds like a confession. “I wanted to try, but… It was dumb to think I could.”

And he looks so serious that Richie can’t help it. He snorts.

Eddie jerks his head toward him, eyes flashing. “Are you fucking laughing at me, asshole?” he demands, which does make Richie laugh, a little.

“Yeah, kinda.”

“_Fuck_ you.”

Richie really laughs, but it’s still high in his throat, thin, simple relief from hearing Eddie curse at him. “I’m laughing at you calling yourself dumb, Eds,” he says, raising an eyebrow. “Like, you have something that you know is a quick fix and you’ll still put yourself through that just because you, what, don’t want to be reliant on it? You’re not dumb at all, man, you’re— that’s, I mean…” He runs a hand through his hair, chuckling at himself now as he looks away, embarrassed already. “Okay, this is gonna sound corny as fuck, so blame it on the adrenaline or whatever, but I actually think that’s pretty brave.”

Eddie is silent. When Richie turns to look back at him, he looks shell-shocked, staring back at Richie in disbelief. His lips are slightly parted, and the corner of his mouth, where he’s torn away the skin with his teeth, is bleeding freely.

Before Richie realizes what he’s doing, his hand is halfway to Eddie’s face, his thumb poised to wipe the blood away. He catches himself with a jolt, burying his hand between his thighs and clamping down. He coughs. “You’re, uh, bleeding, bro.”

Eddie wordlessly lifts a finger to his mouth. He pulls it away and frowns at the blood. “Ah, fuck.”

“So pissed about them being after your blood that you did it to yourself first,” Richie jokes. “That’s our Eds.”

“That’s not my name,” Eddie mutters. “And no one calls me that except you.”

“So I guess you’re just _my_ Eds, then.” He grins goofily, slapping his hands on his thighs expectantly and leaning forward, about to press himself up onto his feet. “_Yalla_? Shall we?”

“No, wait—” Eddie’s hand darts out and catches the sleeve of Richie’s hoodie. When Richie turns back to look, he lets go just as quickly. “Uh, we should hang out,” he says, not meeting Richie’s eye, “this weekend.”

Richie blinks, speechless. He feels like he’s been electrocuted.

“If you want to, I mean,” Eddie says, shrugging jerkily. “I still haven’t been to Abdoun, and I’d like to look around, maybe find a café so we could practice ordering shit like we learned in _‘Ammiya_ and then, like, do some homework or something.”

“Do some homework or something,” Richie echoes, laughing. “You sure know how to show the ladies a good time, don’tcha, Eds?”

“Fuck off,” Eddie says, sitting a little more easily now. “We’re going to Salt to visit our host mom’s family on Friday, but I’m free Saturday...”

The grin spreading on Richie’s face dies. “Aw, man, I can’t Saturday,” he says, and it pains him to see his own disappointment mirrored on Eddie’s face.

“How come?”

“Uh.” Richie shifts uncomfortably. “Sandy already asked me to go to Umm Qais with her on Saturday.”

“Oh.” Eddie shrugs, nodding. “Okay. Well.”

“But next weekend?” Richie suggests. “Or even after class. There’s cafés in Sweifieh, too.”

“I, uh, talk to Myra after class, usually.”

“Oh, right.”

“Yeah.”

“Well.” Richie shrugs, feeling a little dejected. “Another time, anyway. The semester is young, after all.” He tries to put on a grin. “You still in your honeymoon period, Spaghetti?”

“My honeymoon ended the first time you called me Spaghetti.”

Richie barks out a laugh. “Well, your angry comebacks keep me in mine.” He grins and finally stands. As he does, he feels something crinkle in his pocket and he reaches in. “Well, here, anyway,” he says, “a reminder of happier times.”

He takes Eddie’s hand, turns over the palm, and presses into it his squashed toilet paper lion.

Eddie looks down at it in surprise and then back up at Richie, eyebrow raised.

“It’s an original Tozier. It’ll be worth millions one day.”

Eddie snorts and looks at it again, and then lets out several more huffed laughs as he turns it over in his hands.

“And it works, because you’re, like, a full-on Gryffindor, dude.”

Eddie goes quiet for a second before he lifts his head again, smirking. “I didn’t think the Gryffindor crest had an old squashed banana on it.”

Richie laughs, and the smile stays on his face when Eddie stands up next to him and tucks the banana-lion safely into his jacket pocket.

When they go back inside, everyone else’s visas have already been renewed. Richie bitches and moans through the blood draw process so that Eddie can show him how it’s done, and as they’re leaving Saleh tells them he pulled some strings and they won’t have to do the blood draw for their next renewal. Eddie pats Richie on the back and says that it’s because he kicked up such a fuss, so Richie hooks an arm around Eddie’s neck and pinches his cheek until Eddie shoves him off, laughing and mad.

The next morning, Richie walks into the classroom to a warm, savory pastry, fluffy egg baked right into the top, laid out on a paper towel in front of his usual seat. He stops in his tracks, staring down at it, and then looks wordlessly to Eddie, sitting at his own desk.

Eddie refuses to look up, hunched low over his laptop. “You really should eat breakfast,” is all he says, his face red as his fingers tap the keys.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whew, we’re in february, y’all! (irl and in fic!) this one was hard to write! i hope y’all liked it regardless. :)
> 
> thanks as always to @jajs for puzzling with me over the best way to describe a panic attack from the outside. she gives richie a 4/10 in terms of his helpfulness in a crisis but he’s trying his best.
> 
> please leave a comment if you’re so inclined! i live for them. <3
> 
> arabic glossary:  
_ahlan_: welcome, hello  
_aywa_: yes, yeah  
_ismi_: my name  
_jahiz_ (ja-hihz): ready  
_sabah al-kheir_: good morning  
_sabah an-noor_: good morning [reply to _sabah al-kheir_]  
_yalla_: let’s go; hurry


	9. february ii: yeah it’s overwhelming, but what else can we do?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Top notes: title is from “time to pretend” by mgmt.

At lunch, Eddie sinks down next to Richie on the loveseat like normal and is in the middle of disinfecting an earbud so they can keep watching _Mean Girls_ when Huda peeks her head into the lounge.

“Hey, Eddie?” she calls softly. “Could I talk to you in my office for a minute?”

Richie feels Eddie freeze. They exchange an uneasy look before Eddie sighs, handing the earbud back to Richie before he reluctantly follows Huda out of the room.

Richie doesn’t see him for the rest of lunch. Eddie doesn’t have class on Wednesday afternoons, so Richie goes to his Women and Society in the Arab World class still unsure what Huda’s talking to him about, although he has a pretty good guess.

About a half-hour into the class, his phone buzzes. He tries to look at it surreptitiously under the desk, but all he sees is that the text is from Eddie before Dr. Ali shoots him a glare, and he sheepishly slides it back in his pocket.

Drumming his fingers nervously on his laptop, he tries to brainstorm ways to read the text. He could go to the bathroom, but if Eddie has a lot to say, he wouldn’t be able to respond for long. Then a light bulb goes off. He navigates to Gmail and starts typing.

**richie:** yooooooo eds any chance u on gchat?  
**edward.kaspbrak: **…yes  
i wish i could pretend not to know who “richterysciencetheater3069@gmail.com” is but calling me eds kind of gives it away  
**richie:** lolllll ya i got this email when i was like 15  
theres a reason huda sends the group emails to my ucla account  
**edward.kaspbrak: **clearly  
**richie:** u can change the name that shows up btw  
so u can change it to “grandmaster rich” any time u want :}  
**edward.kaspbrak:** and why would i do that?  
**richie:** i just think its fair since ur gonna be spaghedward in mine  
**spaghedward:** ugh  
you’re seriously like “if you give a moose a muffin” with these fucking nicknames, you know that, right?  
**richie: **ive never been so flattered  
that moose knew how to live  
**spaghedward:** i changed your name to richie.  
because that is your name.  
**richie:** boring.  
clearly ur comedy education is not proceeding as id hoped  
at this rate ur gonna fail the midterm  
**spaghedward:** i don’t even want to know what a fucking midterm could possibly be  
**richie:** u have to successfully rick roll me  
no actually thats more like the final  
then the student becomes the master  
**spaghedward:** ok fine how about this  
i changed your name to gretchen wieners  
because your hair so big it’s full of secrets  
**richie:** hahahahaghghahahsdhhasdfhhfhgh  
eds you got me rofling in class i cant  
dr. ali lookin at me like im crazy  
**spaghedward:** serves you right  
calling me boring  
**richie:** im sorry eds i was only teasing  
ur the least boring person ive ever met, promise  
**spaghedward:** …waiting for the punchline…  
**richie:** nope, no punchline this time, just the facts ma’am  
anyway u texted me?  
i couldn’t see it bc, um, im in class  
a fact which u KNOW VERY WELL  
but i can easily gchat with u bc it just looks like im taking copious notes like a v diligent student :>  
was the text about huda? what did she want?  
**spaghedward: **yeah, it was  
she wanted to talk about yesterday  
**richie:** ah, i figured  
**spaghedward:** she was super nice about it, it was fine  
asking me if i was okay and if there was anything they could have done better to help me  
i just thought it was funny because she asked me about you, too  
**richie:** ???  
**spaghedward:** haha yeah  
she was like, “sooo, saleh told me that richie stayed outside with you after you asked everyone else to leave you alone?”  
“i just wanted to make sure that this was all right with you, since in the past you and richie have seemed to be arguing a lot.”  
**richie:** ???????????  
**spaghedward:** “if for some reason you felt uncomfortable asking him to leave, or if him being around stressed you out at all, i can talk to him for you.”  
**richie:** omgggg eds!!!!???  
they think we hate each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  
**spaghedward:** hahaha i know!!!  
that’s what i thought too!  
that’s why i wanted to tell you haha  
**richie:** lmaooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo  
**spaghedward:** i told her that you piss me off and make me want to scream but you’re like my best friend here so she doesn’t have to worry  
haha

Richie’s fingers stutter on the keyboard. Warmth spreads like syrup through his chest.

He’s Eddie’s best friend here.

_Why is your heart pounding, you idiot? This means too much to you, Richie! Make it a joke, Richie!!_

He takes a breath to steady his heart and returns to the keys.

**richie:** omfg that’s adorableeeee  
ima ask stanley if our next craft can be friendship bracelets and i will make us matching ones :3  
**spaghedward:** fuck you i take it all back  
i’m telling huda i want a restraining order  
**richie: **lol  
its ok ur my best friend here too, eds <3  
**spaghedward:** you are the literal worst

***

On Saturday, Richie meets Sandy bright and early at the Jett Bus station in Abdali. Where the flea market was a few weeks ago is today devoid of booths, an enormous, empty parking lot island between the two steeply sloping roads. Sandy is dressed cute but comfortable, and she smiles widely at Richie when she sees him, her ponytail bouncing as she jogs over.

The trip to Umm Qais is long, a one-and-a-half-hour bus north to a city called Irbid, and then a thirty-minute taxi to the site itself, but Sandy keeps conversation going almost the whole time, asking him about his school, his major, how he’s liking Jordan, what their program is like. When they get to Umm Qais, she _ooh_s and _ahh_s at the ruins and insists on taking Richie’s picture in front of the black basalt columns, a stark contrast from the yellow-gold stone of their Ammani counterparts. They eat lunch at the restaurant on the terrace, an Italian place because it overlooks the Roman ruins. Richie orders the spaghetti.

On the way back, Sandy dozes next to him, her hand flopped, palm-up, on his thigh. Periodically his gaze leaves the darkened scenery flying past to glance down at her pale fingers like reeds. He wonders if she wants him to take them between his.

He shifts his hips so his thigh is flush with the cool side of the bus. Her hand slides off, thudding gently on the threadbare seat.

***

When Richie stumbles into his bedroom, Bill glances up from his laptop. “_Ahlan_,” he says, his eyes already back on the screen.

“Yo.” Richie pulls his wallet and phone out of his pocket—no new messages—and tosses them on the bedside table before throwing himself face-first onto the bed. “You editing?”

Bill nods. “Yup. Trying to p-politely explain to this f-freshman that you R-E-I-N things in, like a h-h-horse, not R-E-I-G-N, like a king. Same with ‘free r-r-rein’—” he frowns at the screen “—like you’re loosening the reins on a _h-horse_, Juh-_Jared_.”

“It’s almost like the average person doesn’t have an intimate understanding of horse words these days,” Richie remarks dryly, toeing the shoes off his dangling feet.

Bill gestures exasperatedly. “Then they sh-shouldn’t insist on u-using them in their poli sci e-eh-hessays!” He sighs, dragging a hand through his floppy, auburn hair. “The writing center pays me by the puh-paper, not the hour, I’m not ch-changing them all m-m-myself.” He starts furiously tapping the keys. “_Anyway_. How was Umm Qais?”

“_Nus nus_.”

“Only so-so? How c-come?”

“Eh. I dunno. It just wasn’t all that interesting, I guess.” Richie thinks he hears his phone buzz and checks it, but he must have been hearing things. He drops his head again. “I hope Ajloun and Jerash are cooler.”

“You newbies have that e-excursion on Tuesday?”

“_Aywa_.”

“Man, the semester is f-flying by,” Bill mutters, almost to himself. “It’s almost mid-February. Just th-thuh-three more months to go.”

Richie just stares at him. Three months, and he may never see Eddie or Bev or any of them again. His already bad mood curdles in his throat.

Bill seems to come back to the conversation. He shrugs one shoulder. “Ajloun is all r-right, but Jerash is definitely c-cool. If you’re not s-s-sick of columns by now.”

“I’ll never get sick of gazing in wonder at the results of ancient man’s quest to put a dick on every building. It’s inspiring.”

“Truly, society has not p-progressed.” He glares hard at his screen. “As evidenced by Juh-_Jared_’s inability to f-f-f-f-fucking s-s-_spell _‘d-d-definitely’. The r-red underlining m-muh-_means something, Jared_, ever heard of s-s-s-s-_spell ch-ch-check_!?”

Richie snorts and rolls over. He pulls his glasses off his face, sets them on the table, and closes his eyes to the sound of Bill huffing angry breaths and keys being pounded. As Richie drifts off, he thinks drowsily that he should tell Bill to R-E-I-G-N it in, just to piss him off even more, before he falls asleep.

***

Early Tuesday morning sees Richie, Eddie, Bev, and Mike, bleary-eyed and sucking down coffee, swaying like saplings beside Huda and Saleh as they watch the van pull up outside AmmanAbroad to cart them to northern Jordan.

Ben is there, too, but his mood is a marked departure from everyone else’s. Looking at him makes Richie feel like he’s in a darkened movie theater, bitterly squinting up at the handsome, charismatic lead he will neither be nor be with.

“At the time it was built, Jerash was unique, architecturally speaking,” he’s saying enthusiastically to Bev. He has an earnest glow about him as he effortlessly tosses a case of water bottles into the trunk, and Richie’s not sure which he envies more: Ben’s open sincerity, or the abs that are practically rippling under his shirt. “The planners worked with the contours of the landscape to make it easier for the people living there to move around, and you can see the Nabataean influence on the standard Roman style in some of the major structures. They’re the ones who built Petra…”

“Keep talking, Haystack,” Richie says, clambering into the far back of the van with Eddie on his heels. “I was hoping to catch some extra zees on the ride up there. This’ll put me right to sleep.”

“Don’t listen to him, Ben,” Bev says protectively when Ben goes red. “He’s just jealous because he’s never been unironically interested in anything in his life.”

“Not true. I am unironically interested in a fucking nap. And whatever happened to JonBenét Ramsey.”

The ride to Ajloun is longer than an hour, and it seems everyone else had the same idea as Richie. Bev and Mike doze off quickly, and even Ben, for all his earlier enthusiasm, conks out so hard he’s nearly bent double, his seatbelt all that’s stopping him from tumbling out of his seat. Richie pulls his iPod out of his pocket and begins unraveling the headphones, ready to get in an extra hour of sleep himself.

Eddie holds out his hand, palm up, expectantly.

Unable to help himself, Richie places his own hand in Eddie’s and simpers, “Aw, Eds, I didn’t know you felt that way.”

Eddie’s look of pure exasperation is worth the elbow he earns in the ribs. “I meant an earbud, dumbass.”

Richie, grinning, places one in Eddie’s hand and tries not to read too much into the fact that this time Eddie doesn’t disinfect it before tucking it into his ear. Maybe now that Richie’s his “best friend here” (_which isn’t that big a deal, Richie, there are only seven of you_), Eddie doesn’t need to disinfect. Maybe Richie has ascended to some new, cootie-less, best-friend level.

“Can we listen to that song we listened to coming back from the Citadel?”

“Which one?”

“The first one that came on. I don’t know what it was called.”

“Hmm, I might know which one you’re talking about. One sec.” Richie navigates to it on his iPod and hits play, watching Eddie’s face expectantly for any signs of recognition as the song starts. Their faces are drawn close by the proximity of the van and the wires of the earbuds. It’s starting not to feel like a normal day unless Richie gets a close-up look at Eddie’s freckles.

After the synthesizer begins its two-note seesaw, Eddie nods and sits back in his seat, smiling. “Yeah, this is it. What’s it called?”

“‘Time to Pretend’ by MGMT.”

“Never heard of them.”

“Well, they started making music _after _1979, so that doesn’t surprise me.”

“Fuck you,” Eddie yawns.

Richie smiles at him, fighting a yawn himself. “They’re new-ish. I’ll play some more of them after this, if you want.”

“Sure.” Eddie crosses his arms and lets his eyes drift shut, listening. The morning sun slanting through the window cuts across the bridge of his nose, lighting his cheeks dusty and golden. “I like the lyrics,” he murmurs, eyes closed. He grimaces. “Except for the choking on vomit part. Disgusting.”

“Mm,” hums Richie, settling back into the seat and blinking lazily, Eddie filling his heavy-lidded vision. “Maybe I’ll make you a mix.”

“Thah’d b’cool.”

“You fallin’ asleep, Eds?”

Eyes closed, Eddie wordlessly raises one middle finger and then leans his head against the back of the bench seat. The furrowed lines between his eyebrows slowly soften and his jaw goes slack, and Richie lets his own eyes close, drifting on the music and thinking how many songs sound like they were written about someone like Eddie.

When Richie wakes up, his glasses are askew and his back hurts. Not in an achy way, but sharp, specific, something digging in just to the right of his spine. He groans, trying to twist away from the pain, and the movement yanks the earbud out.

Eddie flinches and rubs at his ear. “Hey, watch it, asshole.”

“Jesus. From zero to ‘asshole’ in point-five seconds. You kiss your mother with that mouth?”

“No, I kiss _your _mother with that mouth. Jackass.”

“Oho! Stealing my material? I’ll see you in court, sir.”

“The Sleeping Beauties awake,” announces Bev, craning her neck. “And so peace on Earth ends, again.”

“It’s good timing, though,” says Mike. “Apparently we’re almost there.”

Rocky green hills roll by outside the windows, the sun much higher in the sky than when they started. The van rollicks up a pockmarked road until Saleh directs it to pull over by a dirt trail.

They spill out into the sun. Eddie winces at the bright light for a moment before pulling out a pair of blocky black sunglasses out of his fanny pack. He slides them on, and his brow unfurrows slightly.

“Nice shades, man,” Richie laughs, tapping them with a fingernail. “Did you get them from the school lost and found during your days as a hall monitor? Steal them from a cool kid in detention when he wasn’t looking?”

“Why should only the cool kids enjoy protection from UV rays, Richie?” Eddie says with a grin.

Richie wants to kiss him on the mouth so fiercely he feels the urge to scream.

Huda and Saleh lead them on a short hike through meadows of yellow wildflowers billowing in the wind, caves and grottoes dotting the hills, that culminates in a lookout point high above a town nestled in the valley below, like a pearl in an oyster.

Ben brought his huge, fancy-ass DSLR camera for Jerash but for the hike he turns it on the rest of them. Mike nobly contemplating the landscape. Bev with flowers in her hair. Richie tucks a bloom behind his ear and poses with his arm slung around her, their heads leaned together and a broad smile splitting his face. He thinks he’ll get it printed and put it up in his dorm room when this is all over. The thought makes his heart twist painfully.

After the hike, they visit Ajloun Castle, a squat brown fortress built in the twelfth century. Ben is not as enthused about this site, but he and Mike still marvel at the dark, dank interior, ducking below low doorways. At the top of the castle they lean over the castle walls, gazing for miles in any direction.

“Let’s take a cute picture, the five of us,” says Bev, turning to them. Yellow petals cling to her curls. “I demand a cute picture.”

“What are you thinking, Bev?” asks Mike.

Bev narrows her eyes thoughtfully. “How about a jumping picture? Those are always cute.”

“A _jumping_ picture?” Eddie repeats incredulously. “They’re so corny.”

“Exactly! It’ll be adorable.”

Eddie grimaces. For some reason, the fuss he’s kicking up rankles at Richie. Richie’s in a shitty mood and _he’s _still gonna jump for the dumb picture because god knows it’ll last longer. What’s the big fucking deal? He chews on his cheek and tries not to let his bad mood show on his face.

“C’mon, Eddie, it won’t be fun if we’re not all in it,” says Bev, wheedling.

Eddie sighs. “Fine. Let’s make it quick.” He leaves the railing to join them.

“Jesus, Eddie,” laughs Mike, “it’s not like you’re going before a firing squad.”

Richie glances down at Eddie as he trundles up next to him. “Don’t be intimidated by my eight-foot vertical leap, Eds.” Eddie scoffs.

“All right,” says Bev, “let’s jump on three. Ready? One, two… _three_!”

When they lean over the camera to look, Eddie bursts out laughing. “Eight-foot vertical leap, my _ass_,” he crows. “You barely made it eight _inches_, Richie!”

“My body is just so long, it’s harder for me to get it off the ground than the rest of you.”

“Doesn’t make any sense. And Mike’s taller than you.”

“Eddie, you jumped the highest of all of us,” says Ben, impressed. “You should play, like, basketball or something.”

“Yeah, you already get enough practice dunking on Richie,” teases Bev.

By the time they bundle back into the van, it’s nearly lunchtime. Richie hands Eddie an earbud without a thought, and Richie puts on The Cure since he feels a little like wallowing for no reason. They spectate a good-natured but surprisingly heated argument between Ben and Mike about the effects of the Crusades on Jordanian landmarks.

“And they think _we _argue,” Eddie mutters under his breath, making Richie snort.

At Jerash, on the outskirts of the old city, Huda herds them all over to a canopied area full of picnic tables and orders them lunch. When it arrives—bread, hummus, falafel, tabbouleh: a standard lunch to them, by now—they tear into it, ravenous.

“Does anyone have any plans for the long weekend coming up?” Huda asks.

Richie blinks, rearranging a mouthful of falafel to ask, “We have a long weekend coming up?”

“Yeah, dumbass, it’s the prophet’s birthday in like two weeks. We get Thursday off.”

“Fuck yeah, no Dr. Amer’s class.”

Eddie’s mouth twists skeptically. “What do you care? You never do the homework, and he still loves you.”

“Exactly. You know how much energy it takes to bullshit your way through a three-hour class when you’ve done none of the readings? Which was one hundred percent a joke, Huda, I always do the readings.”

“I didn’t hear anything,” she says innocently. Richie shoots her a finger gun and clicks his teeth as he pulls the trigger, making Eddie roll his eyes.

“A long weekend will be nice,” says Mike, longingly. “It’s kind of been go-go-go since classes started.”

“We should all go on a big trip somewhere.”

Ben’s eyes light up. “Syria!” he exclaims. “I’ve been dying to go. It’s only a couple hours to the border.”

“Are we allowed to go to Syria?” Eddie asks doubtfully. “Isn’t there a travel advisory for Americans?”

“Like traveling anywhere, it’s important to be safe and mindful,” says Huda, “but you all have the cultural knowledge you need. I’m sure you’ll be fine if you decide to go. You’re smart.”

“You take that back right now, Huda,” Richie says, mock-offended. “I ain’t no nerd.”

“We were _just _talking about the fact that our teachers all love you,” Eddie complains, “even though you have done the homework maybe a quarter of the time.”

“That’s what I’m saying. Would a nerd skip the homework? Pretty sure that’s something the cool kid does.” He looks to Huda. “Again, this is all hypothetical. I don’t skip the homework, and Eddie is a known liar.”

“A cool kid probably wouldn’t care so much about making the program manager think he’s doing the homework,” Mike points out slyly.

“Wow, Michael, I see how it is. Trying to cut me down so that you can ascend to my cool-kid throne.”

“I think we all know Bev is the coolest kid of all of us,” says Ben.

Bev, who Richie suddenly realizes has been uncharacteristically quiet, lifts her head and grins back at Ben. “I mean, I wasn’t gonna say anything, but...”

Richie groans, setting his chin in his hand. “Ugh, the ultimate cool-kid move: not saying anything. See, that’s where I fall down.”

“I’d love to see you fall down a flight of stairs,” Eddie says mercilessly.

“You think Stan and Bill would want to come, too?” Ben muses, looking around.

“I know Stan has expressed interest in going somewhere,” says Mike. “He and I were already talking about Syria, actually, or Jerusalem. But if everyone wants to do Syria, maybe we can save Jerusalem for spring break.”

“Ah, I can see it now.” Richie slides a hand across the air, imagining the marquee. “Mike Hanlon and Stanley Uris star in National Lampoon’s _Spring Break in the Holy Land_. One way or another, you’ll end up on your knees.”

The whole table laughs—even Huda hides a smile behind a hand. Ben snorts his juice up through his nose, coughing wetly as it dribbles onto the table, making Bev shriek in amusement.

The sight of it strangles Eddie’s laugh into a yelp of horror as he flinches away from Ben, against Richie’s side, and he’s so warm and fits so nice that before he knows it, Richie has cupped a hand lightly, protectively, around Eddie’s elbow.

He tells himself he’ll let go as soon as Eddie jerks away, but Eddie just remains leaning against him, running his mouth at Ben about the bacteria in mucus, so Richie leaves his hand where it is, frozen against the bony knob of Eddie’s elbow. The weight of him is comfortable, he slots in just under Richie’s arm so sweetly—like a cupcake in a tin, Richie thinks, too fondly, and immediately feels embarrassed by it—and he has to stop himself from turning his head just slightly to bury his nose in Eddie’s soft hair, wishing he could tug Eddie more tightly against him and press his ear to Eddie’s temple and listen to the hazy vibrations of his germophobic diatribe through his skin.

Once Ben finishes mopping up the table, Eddie sits up and insists that Ben take a heaping squirt of hand sanitizer from the fanny pack, seemingly unaware and unaffected as Richie draws his hand away. Richie leans forward, forearms on the table, and attempts to appear deeply focused on Mike and Saleh’s conversation about camel milk when all he can think is that he spent the past few minutes holding Eddie up against him, even though it meant nothing to Eddie.

The thought makes his simple heart croak out a song.

After lunch, it’s time to explore the ruins. They all listen politely—and Ben raptly—as the tour guide Huda and Saleh hired for them explains that Jerash is considered the best-preserved Roman archaeological site outside of Italy, a once-bustling city on the outskirts of the Roman Empire covering almost 800,000 square meters—a measurement that Richie can’t intuitively picture but that he can see just from looking around him means _big_.

Emerging from the visitors’ center, they meet a dusty road leading to a proud stone archway that punches a reverent _oh_ out of Ben as they approach. Richie bites his tongue to keep himself from ripping on Ben for being so damn earnest. Just because Richie’s feeling shitty doesn’t mean he should bring down the others. When Eddie marches past him to the sign in front of the arch, he takes the opportunity to escape temptation.

In front of the sign, Eddie starts reading the Arabic out loud, forcefully, as though this is something he has set his mind to do. “_Bawabat Hadrianus, aw qaus an-nasr_—”

Richie begins translating it poorly over his shoulder. “‘The Hadrianus Gate, or Nasser’s Arch—’”

“_An-nasr_, like victory, not the Egyptian nationalist,” Eddie laughs, shaking his head and turning back to the sign. “_…bunniyat ‘ala sharaf sultat al-imbratour_—”

“‘…was built in honor of the Emperor’s salad—’”

Laughter bursts from Eddie’s mouth, his eyes crinkling up so he has to stop reading. “_Sulta_, you idiot, not _salata_,” he giggles.

“Oh, is that why Lebnani Snack keeps giving me fruit salad when I’ve been trying to gain power over all fruit?”

Eddie’s hand grips Richie’s shoulder hard as he tosses his head back, and Richie laughs, too, shocked by how well these jokes are playing with his audience. Too bad all of one person would ever think they were funny. On the other hand, if that one person is Eddie…

Eddie’s laughter peters out as he swipes at his eyes. “You’re really distracting me from working on my reading comprehension. You dick.”

“Sorry, I just wanted to give Haystack some space,” says Richie. “He’s just so rock-hard for these old buildings. Someone should arrest him before he feels up a… rampart? That’s a thing, right?”

“I think so.” Eddie frowns. “But now all I can think of is how dirty it sounds.”

“I’ll ram _my_ parts…”

“Lame.”

“Yeah, not my best.” He buries his hands in his pockets and turns back toward the group. Eddie follows. “Anyway, Ben’s the one who wants to fuck this whole-ass town, he probably has some better dirty talk for it than I do.”

“Seems like he found his calling, huh?”

“Romancing buildings?”

“_Architecture_, dumbass.” Eddie scuffs a sneaker through the dusty gravel. “He talks about it at home sometimes, too. I wish I had that enthusiasm.”

“Are you telling me you’re _not _fighting a boner whenever someone says the words ‘international business and management’?”

Eddie scoffs.

“Well, that makes one of us,” Richie rumbles, leering.

“Jesus. Talking about fucking my mom isn’t enough for you, Tozier, you gotta go after the abstract concept of my major, too?”

Richie shrugs again, smiling. “Eh, I’m sleepy, let’s blame it on that. Sex jokes are low-hanging fruit.”

“Yeah. Which is the only kind of fruit you have any power over.”

Richie barks out a laugh and hooks an arm around Eddie’s neck, hauling him in affectionately. To his surprise, Eddie laughs and allows himself to be pulled snug against Richie’s side. He solidly pats Richie twice between the shoulder blades before they break apart again as they rejoin the group.

They proceed through Hadrian’s Arch together, feeling like they’re stepping backwards in time. A long sandy pathway leads past a hippodrome to the left, and they stop in to see a mock chariot race, wooden wheels and horses’ hooves kicking up sprays of dirt.

Past the hippodrome they truly enter the ancient city. The pathway opens up onto a vast forum outlined with a colonnade, fifty-six pale, towering columns capped with an intact entablature encircling the oval city center. They pause at the lone column in the middle, their shoes treading stones that were slotted into place nearly two thousand years prior, trod by untold thousands just like them.

Bev claps excitedly and exclaims, “Another photo op idea! C’mon, guys, one of us in each space between the columns. Ben, give Huda your camera…”

She herds them all into the gaps between the columns. Eddie drags his feet.

“What pose are we doing, Bevvie?” asks Richie, knees bent and springy in between the columns. He’s ready. Ready to perform. Ready to pretend to have fun. Ready to record his time with this group of people he already knows he’ll miss more than he’s ever missed in his life.

“_Pose_?” Eddie echoes, as Bev drags him to the space to Richie’s left. The thick column obscures them as Bev sets him in place.

“One hand on the pillar, one on the hip,” suggests Mike. Richie cranes his neck to see Mike miming the pose.

“Ooh, I like the way you think,” says Bev, darting past Richie to get to her own spot. “Right hand on pillar, left hand on the hip, everyone!”

“Again, I say, ‘_Pose_?’” Eddie’s tone is incredulous on the other side of the pillar. “The jumping photo wasn’t cheesy enough?”

“Oh, relax, Eds,” Richie calls over, trying to keep the bitterness out of his voice. “If you hate it so much, just untag yourself like you did with all your other pictures.”

Eddie doesn’t answer. Richie’s stomach sinks like a stone.

Bev whistles and shouts, “Called out, Kaspbrak!”

“Yeah, I _thought_ I saw you untagged yourself.” Ben’s voice is faint, a few spots down.

“You ashamed to be seen with us, Eddie?” asks Mike teasingly.

“No, that’s not fucking why—”

“You better have your right hand on that pillar and your left hand on your fucking hip, Eddie!” Bev shouts. “_And_ everyone else! Huda, take it when we’re all ready!”

Everyone goes silent, frozen in their poses. Then Huda lifts a thumbs up from behind Ben’s big-ass camera, and the five of them step forward. As Bev jogs back over to Huda, Richie looks to his left to see Eddie, fiercely worrying his bottom lip, his brow deeply furrowed.

“All right, Eds?” he asks breezily.

“No, and how many times do I have to tell you my name is not fucking _Eds_?”

Richie arches an eyebrow. “Whoa, what’s got _your_ panties in a twist all of a sudden?”

Eddie gestures wildly, angrily. “Why’d you have to bring up fucking _Facebook_? It’s none of your fucking business whether or not I untag myself in some pictures.”

Richie snorts, bewildered, tossing his head like a horse. “Seriously? This is what we’re fighting about? _Facebook_?”

“You’re the one who brought it up in the first place!” Eddie’s hands are in the air, waving desperately. “Why do you even fucking care? You’re not my fucking _girlfriend_. It’s— it’s fucking _creepy_, is what it is.”

A jolt goes through Richie, blood rushing in his ears. His brain shuts down, and his mouth opens up.

“Hey,” he snaps, jabbing a finger at Eddie, “I brought it up because you were being a little turd about taking a fun fucking picture with people who actually like you and want to be friends with you, not because I actually care whether or not you’re fucking _tagged_. You can untag yourself in all the pictures you want, man, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be in them in the first place. Jesus _Christ_.” He runs an agitated hand through his tangled hair. His fingers catch painfully, and it only drives his frustration. He spits, “I mean, god fucking forbid we have any photographic evidence of us all having a good time together before we go our separate ways at the end of the semester.”

Eddie’s eyes widen. He opens his mouth to reply but stops. They stare at each other.

Richie exhales and looks away, suddenly overwhelmed by a sense of futile frustration. There’s a time limit on all of this, anyway.

“You know what, Eddie?” he sighs. “Why don’t you do us all a favor and dislodge the ancient Roman column from your fucking _ass_?”

He turns on his heel before Eddie can respond. As he stalks away, the only words that come to him are, _Well. Honeymoon over._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> they’re idiots, your honor.
> 
> this chapter ended up being longer than i wanted it to be, so for pacing purposes i split it into two. however, the second half is already written so i should be able to post it within the next few days. i just really wanted to post something on my birthday today! :D
> 
> also, i got a twitter? i’m very new and very scared, but it’s [@tempestbreak_](https://twitter.com/tempestbreak_) if anyone wants to come talk at me.
> 
> Arabic glossary:  
_ahlan_: hello; welcome  
_aywa_: yes [_‘ammiya_ only]  
_nus nus_: so-so; lit. half-half  
_ukhti_: my sister


	10. february iii: we’ve had the vision, now let’s have some fun

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title again from “time to pretend” by mgmt, because this chapter is a direct continuation of the last one.

Richie’s anger dissipates just as quickly as it appeared. It’s taken over by helplessness and self-loathing. It was only a matter of time before Eddie decided Richie was weird for paying so much attention to him. And because of_ Facebook? _Fucking _seriously_, Tozier?

Yeah, he really fucking blew it with that one. But doesn’t he always? And it’ll all be over in three months, anyway, so who cares?

He tries to take comfort in that thought but it still makes his dumb heart ache.

He leans a heavy elbow on Mike’s strong shoulder and tries hard to listen the tour guide’s spiel about the layout of Roman cities. He tries even harder to ignore Eddie when he joins them. His arms are folded tight across his chest, shoulders hunched forward. Bev murmurs something in his ear, and Eddie shrugs and shakes his head.

After a moment, Mike hooks a hand around Richie’s other arm, squeezing gently, and Richie has to duck his head as his eyes begin to sting. Fucking Mike Hanlon. Hugging Richie like he’s a frightened calf. He wonders pitifully why he couldn’t have fallen for _Mike_ instead. At least Mike would let him down easy, if it came to that.

But no, Richie Tozier had to fall for a Bambi-eyed gremlin with a girlfriend. Fucking typical.

The tour guide leads them throughout the sprawling old city. Richie attaches himself to Ben, who is still starry-eyed and presumably hard-dicked at it all, and Mike, whose boner for the place’s history is only marginally lesser than Ben’s. Their gushing speculations to each other about life in ancient Jerash are a welcome distraction from whatever Eddie and Bev are whispering about, huddled together a few paces behind Richie and the others.

“And here is the nymphaeum,” the tour guide announces, pulling them to the side of the wide cardo to a tall, crescent-shaped structure. “Constructed in 191 AD, it was once a functional fountain built to pay homage to spring spirits the Greeks called ‘nymphs’—”

“So this is basically Eddie’s mom’s bubble bath,” remarks Richie compulsively. It feels like picking at a scab.

Eddie leans around Bev to glare at him. “Shut up, Richie,” he warns. It only has about seventy percent of Eddie’s normal bite. It makes Richie want to pick at the scab even more, make it hurt, make it bleed.

“No, wait,” Richie drawls, tapping his chin, “he said ‘nymphs’, not ‘nymph_os_’…”

“Hey fucknut, you see this?” Eddie’s voice is sharp. He lifts a middle finger on one hand and points to it with the other. “That’s for you, you asshole.”

Richie winks. “Buy me dinner first, Eds.”

“Don’t call me Eds.”

It’s not even anger; all Richie hears is exasperation. He drags his feet through the dust as they turn away, throwing up a cloud.

They continue down the cardo, past some regular outcroppings that the tour guide tells them likely used to be stalls in a street market. Richie lingers by Ben when he kneels down to take some presumably artsy shots. The others meander on ahead, Eddie and Bev still deep in hushed conversation.

Richie turns back to Ben. “So, you really get off on all this shit, huh, Haystack?”

Ben smiles as he stands. “That’s one way of putting it, I suppose,” he chuckles, brushing the dirt from his jeans. “I do love it, but the real reason I’m taking all these pictures is because I told my advisor I’d do my final project based on the stuff I learned here. It was the only way I could get her to sign off on me coming to Jordan for a whole semester when AmmanAbroad doesn’t even have any architecture classes.”

“Oh. Fuck.” Richie grimaces. It’s the first time he’s thought about his promised thesis since he saw Eddie in the airplane. “Yeah, I said something similar, actually. Shit.”

“Just remembered?” asks Ben.

“What gave me away? The cursing or the look of abject horror?”

Ben laughs, even though it barely qualifies as a joke. It feels nice, even though Richie knows he doesn’t deserve it. He’s just not used to having Ben as an audience instead of Eddie.

“Well, if it makes you feel any better,” says Ben reassuringly, patting Richie on the shoulder as a not-so-subtle push to get them walking, “we still have three whole months here before we go home.”

Richie looks at him skeptically and lets himself be herded. “Ben, you’re a real glass-half-full kinda guy, aren’tcha?”

“I wouldn’t necessarily say _that_,” Ben demurs. “But I think it’d be dumb to call it something else when the glass is barely a quarter empty.”

Richie goes quiet, thinking.

“The glass being our semester,” Ben goes on.

“Uh-huh.”

“And the water being… time, I suppose.”

“Yeah, I got it, actually. Thanks, Captain Metaphor.”

Ben laughs, slinging the strap of the camera around his neck. He glances ahead to the group and then leans in, pitching his voice lower. “Hey, do you know what they’re talking about?”

Richie shrugs. “Probably about how they recently excavated some prehistoric outhouse where all the Romans took their ancient dumps.”

“No, no,” Ben snorts, “I meant… Bev and Eddie.” He tilts his head.

The two of them are walking apart from the rest, heads bowed toward each other. Eddie is gesturing, short, choppy motions with the flat of his hand, and Bev is tapping her pack of cigarettes into her palm like a deck of cards, nodding as she listens.

“No idea,” says Richie, growing uneasy.

“Bev was kinda quiet at lunch,” says Ben. “You think something’s wrong?”

“With Bev?” Honestly, it hadn’t even occurred to Richie that Bev might have something she wanted to talk about. Clearly Eddie’s the one needing to complain about some idiot on their program. “Nah.”

Ben drums his thumb against the cap on his camera lens. “I dunno. She’s been talking lately about how frustrated she’s getting with her host family. The curfew, how they want to drive her everywhere so she doesn’t have to take a cab, all the restrictions…”

Richie blinks. “Really? She hasn’t said anything to me about it.”

“She and I are in almost all the same classes together, we talk a lot.” Ben smiles at him. “Kinda like you and Eddie.”

Richie swallows, feeling his neck growing warm. “You guys are way closer than me and Eds are.”

“No way,” Ben laughs. “I still don’t really believe you guys weren’t friends before you came here, honestly. You’re just such a unit. You’re _RichieandEddie_. Like… mac ’n’ cheese, or peanut butter and jelly, or…”

“S&M.”

Everyone turns at the noise that comes out of Ben’s mouth, a thundering guffaw. Even Richie jumps, and then gives an uneasy smile as Ben wheezes, nearly bent double.

“C’mon, dude, it wasn’t _that _funny…” Richie mutters, strangely embarrassed. Is he really not used to making someone else laugh this much?

“Richie, don’t kill my favorite Ben!” Bev chastises him, grinning. “I need him to keep me sane in MSA class.”

“And Ben, you shouldn’t laugh,” says Eddie, crossing his arms. “It only encourages him.”

“Yeah, god forbid I get a little positive reinforcement,” Richie drawls. Eddie’s mouth seals shut, and they stare at each other again for a moment. Then the tour guide motions for them all to continue, and Eddie turns. Richie follows, Ben wiping at his eyes next to him.

Their final stop is the North Theater, another enormous amphitheater. They enter on the orchestra level, just below the stage, and before their increasingly irked tour guide can finish explaining to them the acoustics of the place, Richie strides across to the center and plants himself over the marked tile he remembers learning about in Amman. He clears his throat dramatically, puts on his Pretentious Thespian Voice—which mainly consists of overenunciating his Ts and rolling his Rs—and relishes the way it echoes off the towering terrace of stairs: “_What man more wrrretched than this man who speaks? What man more harrrassed by the vexing gods? He whom none now, or alien, or of Thebes, may welcome to their house, or speak to him—_”

“What’s that from?” Ben asks.

“—_but thrrrust him forth from exile_, excuse you, Benjamin, I was just about finished.” Richie sends a fake glare over his shoulder. “It’s from _Oedipus the King_. The only play I’ve been in that could conceivably have been performed in this theater. Although I can also do a rousing rendition of _Greased Lightning_ if you’d prefer.”

“One thousand percent yes,” says Bev.

“Actually, archaeologists believe the _South_ Theater was used for artistic performances,” says the tour guide, attempting to corral their attention again. “This theater is more likely to have been used for political meetings.”

“Well, Oedipus _was _a king,” Richie says. “If he wanted to call all his ministers to complain about the gods or whatever, who’s gonna stop him?”

The tour guide is evidently disgruntled.

“Could you hear the echo when you stood there?” Huda asks, motioning to Richie’s position in the orchestra.

Richie looks at the tile below him. “Yeah, it’s cool,” he says, smiling a little. “You can tell that your voice is magnified.”

Eddie clears his throat. “You wanna hear it from the other side?”

Richie looks up. Eddie is standing at the base of the stairs leading up the center of the looming cavea. His arms are still folded over his chest, his thin lips drawn tight. When their eyes lock, Eddie jerks his head upward, toward the top, one eyebrow quirked in invitation.

Richie chews the inside of his cheek. Then he steps forward. “Sure,” he says lightly. “But if you’re planning to push me to my death, I’d just like to point out there _will _be witnesses.”

Eddie rolls his eyes and turns to climb the stairs. Richie dimly hears Bev say that she’ll stand on the tile to test the acoustics, but he’s already preoccupied wondering why Eddie’s asking him to climb to the top of the theater, why he’s even talking to Richie right now after everything he said, because Richie definitely wouldn’t talk to himself, _he whom none now may welcome to their house, or speak to him._

Still, he puts one foot in front of the other and follows Eddie up the steep stone stairs.

Eddie’s jaw has a determined set to it, visible when he turns his head to check if Richie is following him, and as much as Richie wishes he had the requisite self-control, he can’t help staring at the sharp angle of Eddie’s jawline, the pumping of his jean-clad thighs, the sliver of skin along his lower back revealed by the flapping hem of his shirt, the shift of his taut ass in his pants.

“Quite the view, Eddie Spaghetti!” Richie shouts, because he needs to make it a joke. Eddie flips him off over his shoulder, and Richie thinks, madly, that it would be an even _funnier_ joke to _spank _Eddie, to test the acoustics of Richie’s hand slapping Eddie’s firm ass, to find out how _that_ sound would travel through the theater, if it would echo and magnify like his voice or die with a whimper into strained silence.

Richie swallows dryly and curls his fingers together.

When they reach the top, they both pause, a little breathless, and look back over the edge of the terraced steps.

“Wow. It’s pretty high up, huh?” Eddie’s tone is breezy, but his hand is glued to the wall behind them, eyes skittering over the cascading stairs. His throat bobs, his hand inching closer to his fanny pack.

The Roman amphitheater in Amman floods Richie’s memory. It was cold that day; Eddie was wearing his white parka like armor, refused to climb the cavea with the rest of them, remained a white smudge on the planet’s distant surface, down where Richie had leaned over to speak to Eddie through the swoop of antique stone, unsure what to say.

Today is sunny and warm. Eddie’s wearing a blue striped t-shirt, and his hair is curling at the nape of his browned neck. Today, he climbed the cavea, set his jaw and took off into the sky, and he asked Richie to come with him. Eddie looks different, now, suddenly; the days since they last stood in the shade of a craggy monument have accumulated to create the Eddie who stands before him, peering over the edge—uneasy, sure; scared, even, with fingers itching for an inhaler he hates to use; but unmistakably _there_—rather than planting his feet on the ground, unmoving and unwilling to be moved.

Richie himself doesn’t feel any different, though. He’s still looking at Eddie. Still longing for Eddie to look at him. Still surrounded by stone, struggling to speak.

_Tell me a secret, Eds._

He leans into Eddie’s space, distracting them both. “Not used to the view from on high, huh, Shortstack?”

Eddie whips his head up, glaring daggers, fanny pack forgotten. “I’m not fucking short. Five-nine is the world average.”

Richie laughs. He knows how to talk to _this_ Eddie. The Eddie that wants to fight. “You know how I know you’re short, Eds?”

“I’m _not_ fucking_ short_.”

“Other than through the use of my own eyes, I mean.”

Eddie lets out a garbled, frustrated moan, throwing his hands in the air. “_How_?”

“Because you memorized that fact about being five-nine, and yet I know nothing about being six-one.”

Eddie eyes him up and down, as though he’s noticing Richie’s height for the first time. “You’re not six-one,” he finally mutters.

“Am too. Says so on my driver’s license.”

“It also says your name is Bendydick Cumberass.”

Richie barks out a laugh. “I meant my _real_ license. And actually, Bendydick lied about his height,” he says. “He claims to be a svelte seven-foot-eight, but he wore boots to the DMV that day.”

Eddie presses his lips together. Then he laughs, his eyes crinkling up. “You’re an idiot, Richie,” he chuckles, shaking his head.

Richie tries to suppress a grin but fails. “If I’m such an idiot, why’d you invite me up here?”

“Because your dumbass voice echoing through this whole fucking place was giving me a headache.”

Richie laughs, and then Eddie laughs, and Richie wonders if they’re back to normal. They’re not talking about what they said to each other, but something about Eddie laughing while he cusses him out is reassuring.

Then Richie catches him scanning the expanse of steps again, teeth on his abused bottom lip.

“Heights give you the heebie-jeebies?” he asks casually.

“A little,” Eddie admits, voice shaking slightly. “You ever see _Vertigo_?”

“’Course.”

“Yeah.” He nods, tightly. “It feels like that, kind of. Except… Fuck, it’s dumb.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” says Richie brightly. “I’m majoring in theater with a concentration in dumb studies. Tell me.”

Eddie snorts. “Well,” he sighs. “I don’t actually _get _vertigo. But I get freaked at the idea that I _might _get vertigo.”

Richie takes a beat. “So, you’re not afraid of heights, but you’re afraid you might become afraid of heights?”

Eddie huffs out a laugh. “Something like that. Fucking stupid, right?”

“It’s not the smartest thing you’ve ever said, I’ll give you that.” Eddie scowls at him, making Richie laugh and bob his head, as he continues, “_Buuut… _then again, you also thought you were dumb for that whole thing with the inhaler. So I think you should leave it up to the professionals to decide what’s really dumb.” He gives a wink.

Eddie smiles and looks away. “Just because it’s not as dumb as the shit you say on a daily basis…”

“Oh, you shouldn’t compare yourself to me, Eds. It takes years of training to achieve this level of dumb. You’ll just get discouraged.”

“Shut the fuck up.” Eddie waves a hand dismissively. “I’ve heard you in class. You’re smart. You’re one of those assholes who doesn’t even have to try, you just get it right away.”

“Okay, sure, sometimes,” Richie admits, “but if I _don’t _get it right away? I’m helpless. If it doesn’t come easy, I don’t know how to try. I just keep hoping it’ll happen for me, and it almost never does.” He hears himself and grins. “Something your mom says a lot.”

Eddie gives him the finger, for the umpteenth time.

“You’re being very generous with the middle fingers today, Eds,” Richie remarks, shoving his hands in his pockets and looking away. “Guess my tenure as your ‘best friend here’ was short-lived.”

Eddie doesn’t immediately respond. When Richie glances his way, he’s frowning deeply. “You really _are_ majoring in dumb studies, aren’t you?” he says.

“Hey, boys!”

They both look down. Bev is standing in the middle of the orchestra and waving up at them. Her voice is clear as a bell, echoing through the cavea. They wave back.

“She can’t hear us as well we can hear her, can she?” Eddie asks.

“Nah, I don’t think that’s how that works. Would be kind of distracting as an actor if you could hear the people in the nose-bleeds crunching their peanuts.”

In the distance, Bev cups her hands around her mouth, and they hear her sing, “_Rah-rah-ah-ah-ahh_.”

Richie laughs and does the same, shouting back as loud as he can: “_Roma-roma-maa_.” He turns to Eddie expectantly.

At first, he’s sure Eddie is going to refuse. Then his face softens. He sighs and brings his hands up to his face. He calls back, voice breaking, “_Gaga, ooh la-la_.”

“_Want your bad romance!_” they warble together, Bev’s voice hitting them at a slight delay. Faintly, they hear Mike and Ben join in, too. Bev steps away from the center, laughing, and when Richie looks, Eddie is smiling, his cheeks a little pink.

“Eds, you sang!” Richie exclaims. “So cute!”

Eddie tries to frown, still rosy peach. “I’m not fucking _cute_—”

“You’re right, you’re not cute. You’re the ugliest person I’ve ever seen. And yet…” Feeling light, Richie can’t stop himself from reeling Eddie in by the neck and mussing his hair, singing low: “_I want your ugly, I want your disease_…”

“Richie, stop—” Eddie protests, laughing and shoving weakly at Richie’s arm.

“_I want your everything as long as it’s free_—” he sings into Eddie’s ear.

“All right, you’re asking for it—” And the next thing Richie knows, Eddie grips his forearm, twists so his back is pressed into Richie’s side, and pitches his torso forward, using his hips as a lever to sweep Richie off the ground.

An undignified, high-pitched squeal escapes Richie’s throat as his feet leave the stone floor, his legs flailing in the air. Eddie is laughing and shouting something back at him—“How’s _this _for bad romance, huh, dumbass? You still want my bad romance _now_?”—but all Richie can think is how his stomach dropped through his feet when Eddie lifted him, all six feet and one inch of him, how he can feel the muscles of Eddie’s shoulders flexing under his armpit, how if he turned just a bit his chest would be flush with Eddie’s back, his crotch pressed against Eddie’s ass, he would be draped over him, covering him, Eddie’s fingers digging into one forearm, Richie’s mouth on his ear, his other hand free to smooth down Eddie’s stomach—

“Huda says to be careful up there, children.” It’s Bev’s voice again, teasing, from below.

Still laughing, Eddie stands back up and releases him, looking immensely pleased with himself. Richie staggers backwards a few steps as blood rushes to his head.

“Whew, all right,” he breathes, pressing a hand to the wall.

“Serves you right for the noogie,” Eddie gloats.

“Yeah, you, uh, definitely showed me.” Why is he so out of breath? He wasn’t the one doing the work. He presses a hand to his pounding heart and exhales. “Actually, I think _you _gave _me _vertigo, Eds.”

Eddie’s tone is dripping with triumph. “Guess I’m not so short after all, am I?”

Richie looks up at him. Eddie is grinning victoriously at him, his sunglasses pushed up into his hair.

“You are a fucking menace,” Richie finally says, on a laugh. “Did someone feed you after midnight? Is that why you’re like this today?”

Something passes through Eddie’s eyes, something that Richie can’t read. “Uh, no, it’s just…” He shifts uneasily. “I was just thinking of what you said. About us all going our separate ways at the end of this. I guess I just didn’t want to waste time being a, uh—” he uses air quotes “—‘little turd’.”

Richie’s stomach twists. “Oh.”

“As you so eloquently put it.”

“Yeah, I… Sorry.”

“You jackass.”

“No, I really am sorry, man, I—”

“Yeah, so am I.”

“_You_ don’t have to be sorry, Eds, I was an asshole. This may come as a surprise to you, but sometimes I don’t think before I speak—”

“No, it wasn’t just you, I was being a dick, too—”

Richie smirks. “Well, hey, I can think of something better than arguing for a dick and an asshole to do—”

Eddie groans, his face going red. “Jesus _Christ_, you don’t ever fucking stop, do you?”

Richie clicks his tongue. “Nope! An off switch has not yet been found. Factory error.”

“They should have done a fucking recall.”

“You’re telling _me_! I’m a hazard to the public health. No off switch and all the dials are stuck at eleven. Like your mom’s vibrator—”

“_Richie— Fuck!_” Eddie bursts out so loudly Richie almost takes a step back. Eddie shakes his head fiercely, clenching his fists as though he’s really trying to get a hold of himself. “You can’t fucking— We were having a nice moment— I was _just _apologizing to you for being a dick and then you go and—” He gestures indistinctly, as though at Richie’s entire being.

“Be me?” Richie supplies, feeling like he ought to shrink into the ground.

“_Yes,_” Eddie says, and sighs. “I just… can’t fucking_ handle _it sometimes.”

Richie shoves his hands in his pockets and tries to smile. “Don’t worry, Eds, I get that a lot,” he says. “‘Tozier, you’re too much, tone it the fuck down or you’ll be running laps.’ ‘You shouldn’ta run your mouth about my sister, Richie, I’m gonna knock your fucking head off after school.’” He shrugs. “I’m ‘Too Much’ Tozier. I get it.”

Eddie stares at him. “No, that’s not what I meant.”

Richie feels his eyebrows bow upward, confused but hopeful. “Then what’d you mean?”

“It’s not _you_,” he says. “It’s _me_.”

Richie gives a lopsided smile. “You breaking up with me, Eds?”

“Ugh, I _mean_…” Eddie plows on, forceful. “You’re _fine_, Richie. There’s nothing wrong with you. I… Like I said, you’re my best friend here. It’s _me _I can’t handle.”

Richie frowns, but before he can say anything, Eddie continues.

“It’s just… you make me _so fucking mad._ Like, all the time. And I don’t know why. I don’t…” He crosses his arms and looks away. When he speaks again, his voice is small. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

Richie gives an uncertain grin. “Well, there’s so much to choose from, Eds—”

“No, shut up, I’m trying to—” Eddie jerks his hand in vague frustration. Richie decides it’s a good time to shut his fat mouth. “It feels like there’s something _different _about me, here,” Eddie goes on, on an exhale. “It’s like I’m always running a low-grade fever, or just on the cusp of a splitting headache. I’m pissed off at you all the time, but I don’t know why. If I’m not giving you shit, I’m fake-yelling at you, and if I’m not fake-yelling at you, I’m real-yelling at you, and it’s… not fair, because it’s not your fault. You just—” He looks at him helplessly. “You make me want to scream.”

Richie’s mouth goes dry. Somehow, the way Eddie says it, the tilt of his head, the break in his voice, makes Richie’s heart pound, a million thoughts speeding through his head. A breeze coils through the cool stone, whistles in the crevices and cracks, lifting those shiny, budding curls at the nape of Eddie’s neck and stealing the breath from Richie’s lungs.

_Did you just tell me a secret, Eds?_

He licks his lips and opens his mouth to reply.

“That’s what your mom said to me last night.”

Silence. Richie’s eyes widen. Eddie stares at him in disbelief.

_Fuck, fuck, fuck, that’s not what I meant to say at all. It just came out!_ (_Title of my memoir.) Hey, actually, that works. Because of the queer thing_— _Shut up, Richie-brain, focus!_

Richie gulps and smiles uneasily. “Okay, so maybe it’s a _little _bit my fault—”

Eddie rushes him. “You’re such a fucking asshole,” Eddie screams, eyes bugging. “I’m gonna throw you down these fucking stairs, you jackass, see if I fucking don’t!”

Richie shrieks and turns tail, off like a shot across the curving ledge of the theater, Eddie hot on his heels. Richie’s legs are long, but Eddie is fast, _really _fast, and he’s on Richie in seconds. His arms snake around Richie’s waist and haul him awkwardly toward the edge, laughing and kicking and trying to wriggle out of Eddie’s grasp.

“Eds! Mercy! Uncle!”

“Gonna make _you _scream, fuckface,” Eddie grits out.

“You can make me scream any time, Eddie, baby!”

“Oh my _god_,” Eddie groans, yanking at him, but he doesn’t have the leverage this time, and Richie’s feet stay firmly planted.

“Heeelp!_ Hayy-_elp! Won’t someone _sayyve _me?” Richie cries dramatically, putting on an old Hollywood damsel-in-distress Voice. “Hey, Eds, let’s do the _Singin’ in the Rain _thing. You know? _No, no, no! Yes, yes, yes!_”

“Shut up, shut up, shut up!” Eddie laughs, digging his fingers into Richie’s ticklish side and making him squirm and choke. “You are such an obnoxious asshole, I don’t know why I’m even fucking friends with you!”

“_Best _friends, Eds, you told Huda, it’s practically Facebook official!”

“Yeah, and I know how you care about that shit!”

“Richie? Eddie?” Huda says.

They leap apart, breathing hard. Huda’s standing in the center of the orchestra, and everyone—including their tour guide—is staring up at them.

“Could you come down now?” she asks. “It’s just about time for us to head back.”

Richie raises a breathless thumbs up, his other hand braced on his knee. He turns to Eddie, and they exchange sheepish grins before they descend the steps.

***

As they leave the theater, Bev sidles up to Richie, eyes shining with amusement. “What was _that_?”

“Oh, just Eddie trying to defenestrate me. No biggie.”

“Uh-huh,” she drawls. The way she looks at him makes him feel utterly transparent. Richie wonders how it is that Bev can read him like a fucking street sign. “We do construct intricate rituals, don’t we?”

“What the hell does _that_ mean?”

She shrugs, still smiling, and reaches into her purse to draw out a pack of cigarettes. She wordlessly offers him one, and he takes it, still eyeing her suspiciously. Bev offering him a cigarette is code for _Wanna talk, just us?_

They let the others go on without them as he leans down so she can hold the flickering flame to the end of his cigarette. “So,” he says warily, puffing around the sticky paper, “what’s up?”

“It’s my birthday this weekend,” she says. “I wanna do something fun.”

_Oh, is that it?_

“Hell yeah.” He smiles. “What’re you thinking?”

“Huda mentioned a place on Rainbow Street with a good happy hour. I’m thinking Thursday after class. That work for you?”

“Yeah, I got nothin’ to do but homework, and we’ve already established I’m too cool for school.”

Bev laughs a little too hard at that, he thinks. Maybe it’s his _Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles_ shirt.

“Anyway,” he says, “what didja think of the holiday plans, _ukhti_? _Richie and Bevvie Go to Syria_? You seemed a little quiet while we were talking about it.”

“Yeah. I didn’t want to say anything earlier since everyone was getting hyped,” she says, flicking off ash from her cigarette, “but Bill and I actually already have plans to go Lebanon.”

Richie’s eyes widen. “Really? Bill didn’t say anything to me.”

She shrugs. “It’s pretty new. He only asked me a couple days ago. Apparently he was saving up to try to go home over spring break, but he did the math and realized there was no way he was going to be able save up enough in time to afford a flight to Maine and back. Roundtrip to Beirut’s only like two hundred bucks, though, so he asked if I’d want to go and I said sure.”

“Man,” breathes Richie, shaking his head. “My roommate can fucking get it, I guess, huh? What’s his secret?”

“Oh, it’s ancient,” says Bev, smirking. “Only the wisest of the Old Ones know it: If you want to spend time with someone, just fucking ask.”

“Hmm, sounds fake.”

“Yeah, you’re right, I was lying. You’re actually supposed to give them wet willies and make jokes about fucking their mom.”

“Hey, now, Marsh, play nice. I have given no wet willies. Although…”

“Don’t get any ideas.”

“I think you and Big Bill have enough ideas for all of us.” He waggles his eyebrows. “Traveling to Beirut? Just the two of you? No curfew, no host parents to go back to at the end of the night? Nothing but you, Bill, and a wire-frame bed in a cheapo hostel? Romance is in the air.”

“It may have been a factor in our plans,” Bev says mischievously. “They do say Beirut is the Paris of the Middle East.”

Richie laughs and croons, “_I love Beirut every moment, every moment of the year_.”

Bev giggles. Then, abruptly, she asks: “So you think you’ll ask Sandy to go with you guys to Syria?”

Richie blinks, startled. That was the _last _thing he would have ever expected her to ask about. “Uh, no? Why would I?”

“I don’t know. I heard you went to Umm Qais with her over this weekend. And she’s been texting you, right?”

“Yeah...” Actually, Richie hasn’t responded to Sandy’s texts since Saturday. He feels a little guilty, but every time he thinks of picking up the phone, he gets distracted. That’s no one else’s business, though.

“All right. It just seemed like something was going on with you two.”

“Not really.”

Bev gives him another penetrating look. “’Kay,” she says finally. “Then I guess it doesn’t really need to be said, but my birthday’s gonna be Losers only. Just F.Y.I.”

Richie tugs the sides of his mouth down, confused. “Huh?”

“When I told Eddie about it, he asked if it could be Losers only,” she says. “Not that it really matters. I mean, Bill has some Jordanian friends he might have brought, but other than that I’m pretty sure you’re the only one who really knows anyone outside of the seven of us. But if nothing’s happening between you and Sandy...”

But Richie’s still focused on the first part. “Eddie asked that?” he repeats, stomach churning.

“Yep,” she says, popping the P. “Something about wanting to spend as much time as we can together before the semester is over.”

“Not to mention, the last time we went out with Sandy, I abandoned him in the bar,” Richie adds bitterly. He takes a long drag, trying not to clench his jaw.

“He didn’t say anything about that,” says Bev. “Just that he realized today how fast the semester is going by. That we’re already a month in, and he didn’t want to regret not spending time with all of us together.”

Richie winces. “Any chance he mentioned not wanting to be a, quote, ‘little turd’?”

Bev snorts. “Now that _is _ringing a bell.”

“Thought so.”

Bev raises an eyebrow at him. “What did you guys talk about up there, in the theater? Seemed like you were having a long conversation. When you weren’t wrestling like kids.”

“What do Eddie and I ever talk about, Bev?” Reaching the parking lot, Richie takes one last drag of his cigarette and crushes it beneath his shoe. “Everything and nothing at all.”

***

The sun is setting as they clamber back into the van. On the way back, Eddie’s on the window, Richie cramped next to him in the center with Ben already snoozing on his other side. He lets Eddie scroll through his iPod, their faces hovering close over the dimly lit screen.

“Why do you have so much music, anyway?” Eddie asks, hushed in the dark.

“So I can cater to anyone’s tastes,” Richie answers easily. “If anyone looks through this, they’ll find _something _they like. It’s also good for making mixes for people. I’ve got it all. I’m always prepared. Like a… hipster Boy Scout.”

Eddie snorts, still scrolling. “But what’s _your _taste?” he presses. “It’s your iPod; it should have stuff you like on it.”

Richie shrugs. “I like lots of stuff,” he says noncommittally.

“But what’s your favorite?”

“_You’re_ my favorite, Eds.” _Fuck. _Richie shifts awkwardly._ It Just Came Out: The Richie Tozier Story_. _A New York Times worst-seller. Zero stars. _

Eddie just chuckles, “Shut up, Richie.” He pauses. “Uh, I wasn’t saying that to be mean, you know.”

Richie huffs out a laugh. “Yeah, I know, man. You don’t have to explain. I like our thing.”

“Our ‘thing’?” Eddie raises an eyebrow. His face is so close, illuminated by the screen. All of a sudden, Richie’s neck is warm and prickly.

“Yeah, our thing. Our schtick,” he says. “All the great comedy duos have a schtick. Laurel and Hardy. Fry and Laurie.”

“I see.”

“Yeah. So don’t worry about being mean to me. That’s like, our claim to fame. What we’re known for. I think our audience would revolt if you started being nice.”

“Audience?”

“Mostly Ben. He’s a big fan of ours apparently.”

Eddie nods, giving a small smile. “Like mac ’n’ cheese,” he murmurs, and stops scrolling. He selects a song.

_Caaan… anybodyyy… fiiind meee… somebody tooo… love…_

“You like Queen, right?” Eddie asks quietly. “You said it at the party, I think.”

Richie pushes his glasses up his nose. “Y-you remember that?”

Eddie shrugs. “It was one of the only bands I had ever heard of that night. And anything was better than ‘Stanky Legg’.”

Richie laughs. “Yeah, I like Queen,” he admits. “And at the risk of sounding like a dumbass romantic, this is probably my favorite song of theirs.”

“Hm,” Eddie hums, a smile in his voice. “So I chose well, is what you’re saying.”

Richie puts on a hushed version of his Rich “Records” Tozier Voice, the Voice he’d use when he was running his college radio hour freshman year from two to four A.M., and whispers, “Hey, hey, hey, you’re listening to Radio KLAD, and this is DJ Eddie K on the tables, we call him Dr. K around these parts because he’s got a Ph.D. in _funk_—”

“Shh, Richie, you dumbass,” Eddie chides, laughing. “I’m trying to listen.”

“Sorry, Eds. I’ll can it.” He mimes locking his lips together and throwing away the key.

He cranes his neck to look out the window at the dim orange streetlights zipping past. The song changes, and changes again, without comment from Eddie. Richie closes his eyes and wonders what’s going through Eddie’s mind.

A warm weight thuds against his shoulder. Richie’s eyes snap open. He looks down.

Eddie’s asleep, his head nestled against Richie’s arm. His mouth is slightly parted, his breathing just on this side of a snore, and Richie’s heart is pounding so loud he’s afraid it’s going to wake up Eddie, and Ben, and everyone else in the van.

The iPod is slowly slipping from Eddie’s slack hand. Richie reaches out and gently extricates it, pulling it into his own lap. Eddie’s fingers twitch as he does, his palm still upturned, and Richie longs to take it in his. Instead, he just closes his eyes and, heart racing, pretends to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks everyone for the birthday wishes! it really made me feel good, especially since i’ve been having kind of a rough couple weeks, oof. 
> 
> feel free to come talk at me on twitter! i’m [@tempestbreak_](https://twitter.com/tempestbreak_). it's basically all clown town all the time and i still don't know what i'm doing but i think it could be fun?
> 
> arabic glossary:  
_ukhti_: my sister


	11. february iv: i remember when i lost my mind / there was something so pleasant about that place

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from “crazy” by gnarls barkley

“Marty—? Marty— _Myra_! _Listen _to me. I _know_, but it’s just not a big _deal_—”

Richie raps lightly on the doorframe, leaning in. “Eddie?”

Eddie jerks his head up from his laptop. He’s sitting alone in an empty classroom, having sequestered himself after class ended nearly two hours ago. His forehead is lined and twitching with ill-concealed anger.

He grits his teeth in a smile. “Oh, hey, man, what’s up?” His tone is laughably nonchalant.

Richie raises an eyebrow at his obvious attempt at normalcy. “Not much, _bruh_, just about to grab a taxi down to Bev’s birthday. You want in?”

Eddie perks up at that. “Oh, yeah, that’d be—”

A prim voice crackles from the speakers of Eddie’s laptop. “Who’s that? Is that Bill Denbrough?”

Eddie’s shoulders noticeably tense. His gaze slides reluctantly back down to the screen. “Uh, no, Mar— Myra, it’s, uh… Richie?” He winces. Richie stares in confusion. _Wincing?_

“Richie?” the laptop crackles. “You haven’t mentioned a Richie.”

Eddie laughs, high-pitched. “Sure I have,” he says. “He’s in both my Arabic classes?”

“I thought that was Bill Denbrough.”

“Uhh, nope, Bill’s just in one. Richie’s in both, and in two others—”

Richie decides he doesn’t want to be here for this anymore. He starts backing out of the room, and Eddie focuses on him again. Richie holds up a hand, fingers splayed. “Five minutes?” he stage-whispers.

Eddie nods and gives him a thumbs up, and as Richie closes the door behind him, he hears, staticky, “Are you _close _with this Richie? If you’re close with someone, why wouldn’t you _tell _me—”

He shudders involuntarily as the latch clicks.

Eddie isn’t ready to leave for nearly twenty minutes, but Richie waits anyway. When Eddie does finally emerge from the classroom with his backpack, he’s cagey; his already thin lips are drawn tightly into his mouth, the muscles in his jaw strained.

So, Richie decides not to prod. He stands, shouldering his own backpack, grinning easily. “_Yalla_?” he asks.

Minutely, Eddie relaxes. He nods. “_Yalla_,” he says, with relief.

***

By the time they arrive at the bar, it’s already boisterous. The place is on Rainbow Street, past Books@Cafe, and is three stories, with a terrace on the top floor. Richie and Eddie find the other Losers at a long, dark-grain wooden table on the second. When they arrive, Bev, sitting at the head, beams at them.

“Heyyy, you made it!” She stands up halfway in her chair, giving them both clumsy hugs as though it’s been months and not hours. She’s wearing a flowy green top and bright red lipstick, stylish and dazzling. Ben and Bill, sitting to her right and left, both look more than a little starstruck. Bev pulls away and gestures regally down the table. “As your punishment for being late, you must sit on the very end, farthest from the birthday girl.”

Richie gives her a look of sincere contrition. “A fitting punishment. Can Eds and I make it up to you by buying your next two drinks?”

Her grin widens. “I think I could be persuaded.”

After Richie and Eddie serve Bev her requested rum-and-Cokes, they take their own drinks to the end of the table and post up, on the other side of Stan and Mike.

Richie glances across the table to Eddie and holds up his bottle of Almaza. “To Bev’s birthday,” he says.

Eddie looks back uncertainly but clinks his glass. “Bev’s birthday,” he says, and they both drink.

The bar is noisy: shouting, resounding laughter, clattering glasses, with an undertone of dull techno. Next to them, Stan and Mike are embroiled in deep conversation about something from their Contemporary Islamic Thought class, leaning elbows on the table. Richie can’t hear whatever Bev, Bill, and Ben are talking about, but every now and then it’s punctuated by a peal of laughter from Bev, who clearly is thoroughly enjoying herself.

When Richie turns back, Eddie is watching him. It sends heat squirming through Richie’s stomach.

“See something you like?” he asks, winking.

Eddie tightens his lips and looks down, stirring his drink noisily with the cocktail straw. “You’re not going to say anything about Myra?”

Richie quirks an eyebrow. “Do you _want_ me to say something about Myra?”

“Whether or not I want you to say something hasn’t stopped you in the past.”

“Fair,” Richie concedes. “Well, if you must know, Edward, it seemed like you didn’t particularly want to talk about it, so I wasn’t gonna pry.” He looks at Eddie sideways as he takes a drink. “It’s our friend’s birthday. It’s time to have some fun, man, not serious conversations.”

Eddie’s dark eyebrows knit together as he considers what Richie’s said, his expression unreadable. Watching him, Richie realizes how little he truly knows of Eddie. He knows him here, sure; here at the table, in class, at lunch. But when Eddie goes home at night, who is he? And when Eddie goes home in May, who will he go _back _to being? The person in his Facebook profile picture, pressed and proper, with the girlfriend with the crackly, frigid voice asking with reproach if there’s someone he’s close to? It’s hard to reconcile. The Eddie he sees every day, the Eddie in front of him right now, stirring his vodka tonic (with extra lime) and smiling slightly as Stan laughs so hard at something Mike says that he snorts… he seems so different. But is he?

Richie wants to believe he is. Eddie feels so… _special_, somehow. Shiny and exciting and sweet, like ginger ale, or hard candy. Richie wants to roll him around his mouth until his taste is everywhere, between his teeth and under his tongue and down his throat, even smell it in his nose, and have it never fade, only reveal new facets to the flavor. Even the sour or the bitter, he thinks, with Eddie, would still end up sweet.

But he’s been wrong before.

Then Eddie snorts and smiles to himself. “Yeah, you’re right. It’s what Bev would want,” he says, looking up at Richie. His eyes are clear, his expression relaxed, and it’s _Eddie_, the one he knows, the one _he knows _he knows.

The one who, in that moment, he has to stop himself from thinking, is _his _Eddie.

Richie grins back. He tries to make it unreserved. “That’s the fucking spirit.”

He and Eddie clink glasses once more, and this time the skin beside Eddie’s eyes is crinkled up, his smile easy, and Richie feels warm when he takes a swig.

“So,” says Richie, setting down his bottle, “Kaspbrak.”

“Tozier.”

“What do you do to pass the time?”

Eddie looks at him. “What do you mean? We spend, like, ten hours a day together.”

“Yeah,” says Richie, “but that’s in class or in the lounge or something. What do you do at home? What do you do for fun?”

Eddie frowns. “You know what I do for fun. Watching movies with you at lunch and stuff.”

“You get your fun in forty-five-minute intervals four times a week?”

“No, not just that.” Eddie taps his index finger against his glass. “There’s a gym near our apartment, and sometimes I’ll go with Ben. I can’t run for very long yet, but I kinda like the treadmill.”

Richie raises an eyebrow. “Really?”

“Yeah. It’s nice to zone out and not think.”

Richie exhales, impressed. “Well, I can’t say I relate, but I guess I can see the appeal,” he says. “Is that really _fun_, though? Don’t you and Ben, like, watch movies at home? I know he got some stuff from Hammudeh, too.”

“Yeah, sure. Ben brought a bunch of seasons of _Friends _with him. Have you ever seen it?”

“I mean, _yeah_. I was alive in the nineties_._”

Eddie spares him a glare but continues. “Well, we’ve been watching those through.” He taps on his glass again, chewing on his bottom lip. “Uhh, you know, there’s, uh— there’s an episode where Joey and— the blonde one? What’s her name?”

“Phoebe.”

“Right. Joey and Phoebe are supposed to have dinner together, and Phoebe says they do it once a month to talk about the other four friends—”

“Right, and then Hank Azaria shows up and she bails on Joey and it’s a whole thing.”

“Okay, so you’ve _really _seen _Friends_.”

“Yes, Eds, like I said, I was alive in the nineties.” Richie shrugs. “And I may or may not have had a crush on Monica.”

“Really? Monica? She’s so mean to Chandler.”

Richie looks at him. “Pot? I’d like you to meet Eddie ‘The Kettle’ Kaspbrak. I think you’d get along.”

Eddie shakes his head and sighs, but it comes out stuttered, laughing. “Whatever. You’re the one who apparently likes mean people.”

Richie grins. “Why do you think I like Stan so much?”

“Fuck off,” Eddie grouses immediately. “Stan’s not your best friend here.”

Richie hides his smile behind his beer. “No, that’s Bev.”

“_Fuck_ you. You know I’m your best friend. You _told _me I’m your best friend.”

“Did I? I don’t remember saying that. Maybe you dreamed it, Eds.”

“Call me Eds one more _fucking_ time. I dare you.”

Richie laughs, slapping the table once, hard. “It’s too easy to piss you off, man. It’s like the funnest thing ever.”

Abruptly, Stan leans over into their space. “‘Most fun’, you mean.”

“Fuck off, Stan,” Richie and Eddie say in unison.

Stan flips them both off stoically and returns to his conversation with Mike.

“_As I was fucking saying_,” Eddie says loudly. He wraps a hand around his glass and brings it to his lips. “We should do that.”

Richie blinks. “Do what?”

“What Phoebe and Joey do on _Friends_.”

“Get married?”

Eddie’s mouth drops open. “What the _fuck_, Richie? You’re seriously fucking spoiling this shit for me? Are you fucking _kidding_ me, dude—” Then he catches sight of Richie’s expression, and Eddie knits his eyebrows together, waving an angry finger. “Okay, that’s not fucking funny, Richie, you _know _how I feel about spoilers—”

“It’s not a spoiler, Eds, I swear,” Richie laughs, waving a hand. He pauses, raising an eyebrow. “Or _is _it?”

“Fuck you.”

“It’s your own damn fault for not watching _Friends_. Did you not pick up major story beats just from, like, cultural osmosis or some shit?”

“Again, fuck you.” Eddie sips his drink, miffed. “Culture didn’t exactly _osmose_ into my house.”

Richie downs the rest of his beer, frowning, but Eddie doesn’t elaborate on what that means.

It’s just one more thing Richie doesn’t know.

Richie sets down his empty bottle and blows across the top, making a low _hoooo_. He considers what Eddie has proposed. “So you’re saying,” he says slowly, “you want to get together once a month, just the two of us, to talk shit on these other losers?”

“I mean, not to talk shit on them, exactly, but yeah.” Eddie shrugs, looking away. “Or more often than that, since we’re only here for another three months. Maybe like… every two weeks?”

“Why not every week?” Richie ventures. “Just to make it easy to remember.”

“I mean, I’m not _made_ of money.”

“I have money, I could pay for you,” Richie says. He raises an eyebrow lasciviously. “But you know you’ll have to put out.”

Eddie sighs loudly, drumming his fingers on the table, as Richie cracks up. “Don’t you ever get tired of being so fucking predictable? You know comedy’s supposed to be about, like, subverting expectations or whatever, right?”

“Aw, Eds. I’ve taught you so much already.”

“Yeah, I see what you do and make sure to do the exact fucking opposite.”

As Richie laughs, Bev raps her knuckles on the table and announces, “_‘Afwan, yaa shabaab_—”

“We’re not _shabaab_,” Stan protests, indignant. “_Shabaab _are like, rowdy teenagers on the street.”

“Yeah, I resemble that remark!” Richie adds, making Stan sigh in frustration.

“All right. Excuse me,_ shabaab _and Stanley,” Bev laughs indulgently. “The birthday girl desires a drinking game. Bill was telling us about this one called, uh—” she looks to him “—Cheers to—?”

“Ch-Cheers to the G-Guh-Guvnah,” says Bill.

Richie barks a laugh, as Mike lets out a low whistle.

“What?” Eddie asks, leery.

“Nothing,” Richie replies, chuckling. “Just didn’t know that none of us were going home tonight.”

Bev laughs. “Actually, I did think of that,” she says with a wink. “I scoped out a hostel by Second Circle, if anyone gets too drunk to go back to their host parents.”

Richie raises his bottle to her. “Bev, you are the poster child for drinking responsibly.”

“C’mon, the game’s not that b-bad,” says Bill, chiding, “as long as you’re guh-good at it.”

“Is that a challenge, Denbrough?” Richie asks, leering. Bill shrugs and takes a sip of his beer, smirking, but when Richie glances Eddie’s way, there’s a competitive glint in his eye that sends a thrill up the back of Richie’s neck.

Bill explains the rules, with a little help from Mike; all Richie knows is that the last time he played it, he didn’t remember getting home. Roughly, it involves everyone choosing a signature gesture that’s used to tap someone else to drink. There are other rules, but Richie mostly zones out during them, content to wing it.

Once Bill is done explaining, they each have to choose a gesture. They go down the table starting with Bev, who chooses her little salute, and continuing from Bill to Ben to Mike to Stan, until they reach Eddie.

Eddie screws up his mouth, pensive. “I have to think. I was gonna do the middle finger, but Stan stole it.”

Stan gives him his signature gesture.

“It’s gotta be that karate chop,” says Richie.

“The what?” says Eddie.

“The—” Richie demonstrates, pulling one flat hand up beside his head and slicing down “—karate chop. That’s vintage Eddie Kaspbrak.”

Mike laughs. “Oh, yeah. That’s so true.”

“You do that all the time!” Ben agrees.

Eddie’s eyebrows are wrinkled in the center, deeply skeptical. “I do?”

Richie laughs. He furrows his brow and karate chops again, doing his best Eddie impression. “‘Are you _seriously_ talking about going down on my _fucking mother, Richie_?’”

Eddie glares at him as the others laugh. “You deserve a karate chop to the fucking throat for those kinds of comments.”

“Not arguing with you, Eds.”

“Don’t call me Eds.”

“So Eddie’s going with the karate chop, obviously,” says Bev, grinning. “Rich?”

When everyone turns to him, he has to give it no thought at all. He lifts a fist to the side of his mouth and sticks a tongue in the other, bulging in and out. Bev cracks up.

“Seriously, dude?” Eddie says, annoyed. “The blowjob thing?”

“What?” Richie asks innocently. “It’s my signature.”

Eddie only scowls down at his glass, lime wedges and melting ice cubes. “I need another drink,” he grumbles.

After drinks are refilled, they play the game. At first it’s easy, remembering which gesture goes to which Loser, but as the game progresses, Richie remembers why it’s so dangerous. As the drinks flow, it becomes harder and harder to recall. Richie memorizes Eddie’s and Stan’s and cycles between both of them, with a sprinkling of Bev’s every now and then, and, fortunately, he’s only drinking beer.

Eddie, on the other hand, seems devoted to his vodka tonics. He goes through a good three or four of them, getting noticeably less skilled as the game goes on. Eventually, he’s laughing raucously whenever the buck lands on someone else. When Richie has to drink, Eddie even sticks his tongue out at him, delighted and smug.

But Eddie sticking his tongue out tickles something in Richie’s brain. He slams his bottle back down on the table, jabbing an accusatory finger at Eddie’s nose. “_Hold _up,” he exclaims, holding out his other hand to shush the others. “Did you just _stick your tongue out at me_, Edward Kaspbrak? In front of _strangers_?”

Eddie stares at him, confused, before the wheels start visibly turning. Then he throws his head back, groaning in exasperation. “Oh my god, from the _plane_? This is nothing like that!”

“Oh?” Richie’s grin spreads even wider. “And how is it different, pray tell?”

“Because!”

“_Ma sha allah_, what logic, Eddie, I am in _awe_—”

“Shut the fuck up, I— I didn’t even _know _you back then—”

“I knew your _mom_—”

“Don’t—”

“—_biblically_—”

Eddie leans over the table to shove at Richie’s shoulder, his head, nearly knocking over his beer bottle. “You’re such a fucking jackass, Richie,” he grits out, hands mussing Richie’s hair, knocking his glasses askew, while Richie tries to bat them away.

“All right, boys,” chuckles Mike, mollifying. He puts a hand on Eddie’s shoulder and gently guides him back to his seat.

Eddie’s still breathing hard, trying and failing to glare at Richie as he rights his glasses. He looks annoyed and exhilarated, and it makes Richie smile and stick out his tongue. Eddie sticks his out right back.

Stan sips his beer. “See, _this _is _shabaab_ behavior,” he says.

***

When the game peters out, Bev stands up and says she’s going to close out her tab. The rest of them shout her down and pool their money to pay for her, and she quiets down, smiling graciously.

“Well, losers,” Bev says, folding a knee under her in her chair, “we may be done with La Calle, but I would _love_ to keep this party going. The bartender here—Khaled?—told me there’s a club between First and Second Circle, if anyone’s interested. Conveniently located right by that hostel I mentioned earlier.” She quirks an eyebrow, her ruby red lipstick shining in the dim light of the bar.

“Well, fuck it, I’m in,” Richie says, slinging an arm around Bev’s shoulders and planting a sloppy kiss on her cheek. “I’m ride-or-die for you, _ukhti_, you know it.”

“Richard, you are my soulmate,” she sighs, delighted. “Who else? I know Bill’s a party animal.”

Bill smiles briefly but then his face falls. “Wait, a c-club?”

Bev nods.

Bill bites the inside of his cheek. “I bet it has a cuh-cover,” he says, “and pricey d-drinks. I can’t afford that if we’re going to L-Luh-Lebanon this month. Besides—” he turns to Richie “—_one_ of us should g-go home tonight and let them know what’s going on.”

“Oh, in that case…” Richie hoists his backpack out from under the table. “Any chance you could take this with you? It would really cramp my style on the dance floor.” Bill takes it from him dutifully, and Richie blows him a kiss. “Best roommate ever. Give Mama my best and tell her I’m being a good boy.”

Eddie barks out a hard _“ha!” _that comes straight from his chest. Richie pokes him in the shin with his sneaker, and he flinches away, snickering.

“Well, I’m still in,” Richie says. “Anyone else? How about you, Benny Boy?”

But Ben begs off, too, and then Stan and Mike follow his and Bill’s lead, standing regretfully, looking apologetically to Bev, until finally she turns to Richie, grinning, and says, “Well, Tozier? Shall we get our groove on, just the two of us?”

“Wait.” Eddie jerks up, oddly breathless. He licks his lips and swallows, blinking. “I want to go to the— to the dancing. I’ve never been.”

Richie stares at him. He’s vaguely aware the others are doing the same. “You want to go?”

“What?” Eddie crosses his arms over his chest. “Like I can’t go to a— to a club? I’m twenty-one! _You’re _not even legal.”

“I am _here_.” He’s so incredulous he can’t even come up with a joke.

“You really wanna come to the club with us, Eddie?” Bev asks, leaning over the table. She’s twinkling with glee, radiant.

Eddie’s eyes narrow and flick back and forth between Bev and Richie. Finally, he gives a hard nod.

Richie turns to the others and gives a disbelieving grin. “Well, you heard it here first, folks. Eddie Spaghetti’s gettin’ his noodle on tonight, and you’re gonna miss it!”

The others laugh while Eddie clumsily attempts to muss Richie’s hair again but only succeeds in smudging his glasses. Richie pulls them off, chuckling, and cleans them with his shirt as the rest of them stand, gathering their things. Then he feels Stan’s hand on his elbow.

“Hey,” he murmurs in Richie’s ear, “you’re gonna look after Eddie, right?”

Automatically, Richie glances Eddie’s way. He’s pulling on his brown leather jacket and fumbling with the end of the zipper, glaring down at it.

“Yeah, man,” Richie says, voice low, “of course.”

“Good.” Stan nods. “If he gets any worse, take Bev up on the hostel. It’s easier than going back to the host family drunk. Trust me.” He pats Richie’s shoulder and gives Richie one last, meaningful look, and turns to follow Bill down the stairs.

***

Richie, Bev, and Eddie arrive at the club breathless from the hike up Rainbow Street and sated from the falafel sandwiches Eddie insisted they stop for. (Eddie stubbornly ordered two, despite never having finished even one by himself, and when he decided he was done, he shoved the rest of his uneaten sandwich in Richie’s face, smearing hummus across his cheek.

“You’re a fucking menace,” Richie said, trying to take the sandwich from him, but Eddie only held it farther away.

“Take a bite,” he said. “I’ll feed you. Like in the picture, remember?”

“It’s a little harder when we’re walking, Eds,” Richie replied, but still he chased the bobbing sandwich with his open mouth until he managed to get in a few good chomps, making Eddie laugh, delighted.)

The club is dark inside, and loud: blue and purple lights, sweaty dancing, and bass-heavy music that is somehow, yet again, Akon. Richie glances at Eddie when they enter, and though he was bold and happy minutes before, in the club he’s muted, cautious. He stays close behind Richie and Bev as they move through the crowd.

When she reaches the bar, Bev slaps a hand down and flashes a brilliant smile at the bartender. “Three Long Island iced teas, **_please_**!” She grins devilishly back at the two of them.

_Welp_, Richie thinks ruefully, _so much for taking it easy the rest of the night_.

With their drinks, they slide back through the throng of people, until they find space to stand. Richie has to stoop to hear what Bev and Eddie are saying to each other, and even then the music is too loud to catch every word. He sips on his Long Island iced tea and scans the club, keeping an eye on Eddie’s progress through the alcohol bomb that Bev ordered him and trying not to guzzle his own drink.

“Fuck, I wanna _dance_!” Bev bursts out, starting to shimmy her shoulders to the music. She looks at both of them. “I came here to fuckin’ dance. Who wants to dance with me?”

Richie and Eddie exchange glances. “Be my guest,” Richie says, gesturing magnanimously. “I can hold your drink.”

“Uhh,” says Eddie, wary, “I don’t really know how to dance to this music.”

“No one does,” laughs Bev. “Everyone looks fucking dumb, like, objectively. But we’ll look dumb together.” She reaches for his hand.

Eddie glances at Richie. “You’re not coming?”

“Like I said, I’ll hold our drinks,” says Richie, smiling. “Can’t really dance with them, anyway, right?” He accepts Bev’s nearly empty glass, and then, in a moment, Eddie’s, as he reluctantly passes it over. Richie cradles them both against his chest.

“C’mon, Eddie, _yalla_,” says Bev, taking his hand, and Eddie allows himself to be dragged, stumbling a little, to the dance floor.

Once they’re out of sight, Richie chuckles to himself, pleased, “You’ve really outdone yourself this time, Tozier.”

He slinks off to drop the unfinished drinks at the bar, and then to find the bathroom.

As he’s washing his hands, the song changes. A bright, poppy guitar riff is punctuated by a loud shriek of joy that Richie would bet money was Beverly Marsh. He pushes the bathroom door open and navigates through the crowd as Miley Cyrus begins to sing about getting off a plane and into a taxi in an unfamiliar, overwhelming place, and when Richie spots Bev and Eddie on the dance floor, he has to laugh, because Bev is shaking her head and shoulders and hips to the music and screaming lyrics in Eddie’s face, and Eddie’s eyes are wide, his mouth open in surprise or from the exertion of dancing or the closeness of the air in the club, but he’s keeping up, he’s moving, he’s _dancing_, and— it’s not good, objectively, he looks dumb, Richie knows this, but also it’s _amazing_ because he looks happy and young and _alive_, and not at all how he looks on Facebook or when he’s Skyping with Myra, and when Richie pulls up beside them as the chorus is about to hit, Eddie fucking _lights_ _up_.

It sets Richie’s insides on fire.

It’s too loud to speak, so Richie only smiles at him. Eddie looks back, ecstatic.

Then Bev slings an arm around Richie, singing in his ear, and he tears himself from Eddie’s gravity, only for a moment, so the two of them wail along with the lyrics. And on the second chorus Richie has a stroke of genius and draws Eddie in by the collar so he can sing in his ear, “_It’s a party in the HKJ_,” and it takes Eddie a moment but then he nearly doubles over laughing, because _Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan_, and then Bev wants to know what was so funny, so by the end of the song, when they all put their hands up, they’re playing their song, they all sing the lyrics Richie wrote. They know they’re gonna be okay.

***

They dance for a long time, until Richie’s shirts are soaked through under his jacket, and Eddie’s forehead is shiny with perspiration, and Bev keeps running her hands through her short hair to try to lift it away from her sweaty scalp. At some point, Bev sneaks away and returns with another drink, which she passes to Eddie for a sip, and that’s when Richie realizes Eddie must be truly plastered to allow such an exchange of germs. Richie intercepts the drink whenever possible, sucking it down in big gulps and knowing he’s going to pay for it in the morning.

Finally, near midnight, Bev checks the watch she wears on the inside of her wrist and motions for Richie and Eddie to come in close. “I think I’m gonna head out,” she shouts in their ears.

Richie pulls back, shocked. “What?”

She leans in again. “My host family said they’d pick me up if I called them before midnight. So I’m gonna go now.”

He’s in disbelief. “What about the hostel?”

“Oh, yeah!” She nods. “You guys should stay there.”

“Well, _yeah_.” Richie feels his frustration rising. He glances at Eddie, who seems unconcerned, barely listening. He returns to Bev’s ear. “I don’t know where it is!”

“I can show you. C’mon, let’s go outside!” She begins to push her way through the crowd. Richie makes sure Eddie is following, and then goes after her.

Outside, the cold February air bites at Richie, making him shiver and pull his jacket close around him. He stalks after Bev as she goes to the curb to check her phone and begins to shake a cigarette out of her pack.

“What’s going on?” Eddie asks. He looks between the two of them, unfazed by the cold. “What are we doing?”

“Bev is going home,” says Richie, staring at her.

“Oh, that sucks. Are you going home, too?”

Richie glances back at Eddie. He looks _gone_, black eyes in a pale skull.

“No,” Richie says firmly. “I’m staying with you. We’re gonna find that hostel.”

“Oh, okay.” He nods, swaying. “Cool.”

Bev clicks on the lighter and lights her cigarette before gesturing for them to follow her. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s down this way,” she says. “Come on.”

Richie follows her begrudgingly, knowing that it’s her birthday and she must be just as drunk as Eddie. But she’s _Bev_, self-assured and self-aware, striding confidently down the street. Eddie, on the other hand, stumbles and knocks against Richie as they plod after her, until Richie takes a hand out of his pocket and places it, steadying, on Eddie’s upper back, on the supple brown leather, still warmed through from the movement of Eddie’s body.

Bev stops in front of a wrought-iron gate and nods. “Here it is,” she says proudly, taking a drag. “Should be like fifteen, twenty JD for a twin room. I can’t remember exactly. But it’s cheap.”

“All right,” says Richie, dropping his hand from Eddie’s shoulder blades. “I’m gonna go in and make sure they have a vacancy. Stay out here. Don’t leave yet.”

“’Kay,” says Eddie. Bev gives him a salute.

Miraculously, they do have a room left, with two twin beds. Richie pays for it gratefully and collects the key. When he steps back outside, Bev and Eddie are locked in conversation. Eddie laughs so hard he tips over backwards, and Richie lunges to reach him so he doesn’t crack his head open on the sidewalk, but Eddie catches himself with a stumble. He laughs even harder when he sees Richie’s expression.

“Relax, Rich,” Eddie giggles. “I’m fine.” He gives Richie a shove that turns into Eddie clinging to his forearm.

“Okay, champ,” says Richie, gripping his shoulder. He looks at Bev. “Is your family on the way?”

“Yup. In fact, I bet that’s them,” she says, nodding as a car’s headlamps turn down the street. She drops her cigarette butt and crushes it beneath her boot, the ones from the flea market, and gives them both a quick hug. “Thanks for a great birthday, guys. Eddie, you got some moves. Richie,” she says in his ear, “I’m sorry that I have to go home.”

Richie twitches in surprise. When she pulls back, he looks at her.

“They’ve been texting me all night,” she says, giving him a contrite half-smile. “I’m not used to it, but that’s what it’s like here, I guess. I don’t want to worry them.”

“Oh. Yeah.”

“I hope the hostel’s all right,” she says, encouragingly. “Tell me all about it tomorrow. I’ll buy you lunch, all right? Now I gotta go. See you both!” They watch her jog over to the car and when she opens the door, the interior light reveals that it looks like the whole family—mom, dad, sister, and brother—all piled in to come get her. They greet her with a smile, and even wave to Richie and Eddie before they drive away.

“Wow,” says Richie, “Stan said not to go home drunk to a host family, but Bev’s seems pretty chill with it.”

“She says it’s ’cause they’re Christian, so they’re cool with drinking,” says Eddie dully. He licks his lips. “I can’t go home, though, I don’t think. I think my mom would kill me.” He looks at Richie, doleful. “Are you going home, too?”

Richie thinks, _He forgot already_.

Richie thinks, _Or he just wants me to say it again._

He draws one side of his mouth up, shakes his head. “Nope,” he tells him, “I’m staying with you. Now c’mon, killer, let’s get you in bed. Bet you’re exhausted from all that great dancing you did.”

***

The interior of the room is stark: two wireframe twin beds pushed against each wall and one small table adorned with a dim yellow-brown lamp. Eddie peels his jacket off and throws it to the side as soon as they enter, and then collapses on the bed on the right.

Richie puts his own jacket on the table and then picks up Eddie’s from the floor to join his. He assumes that Eddie has passed out right away, but when he steps to the bed on the left, Eddie shifts, making his bed creak and moan, until he’s lying on his back, staring at the ceiling, the blankets yanked up around his armpits.

“Richie,” Eddie breathes heavily. “Holy shit, the room. The room is…”

“A cinematic masterpiece,” Richie quips, pulling his wallet and phone out of his pocket and putting them on the floor.

“It’s spinning…”

He glances over at Eddie, who has one arm flung across the bridge of his nose. “See if you can put a foot on the ground, Eds. That’s supposed to help.”

Eddie shifts one of his legs off the bed but remains still otherwise. His foot dangles. “I can’t reach,” he whines.

Richie chuckles. “You’re too short to cure the spins. Adorable.”

“Shut up.” He shifts his arm up so it’s resting above his head on the pillow and sighs loudly. His eyes roll down to land on Richie, unbuttoning his overshirt. “Richie, am I gonna throw up?”

“I dunno, Eds, are you?”

“I don’t know, you tell me, you saw what I drank,” Eddie says plaintively. “Is it going to make me throw up?”

“It might, I guess.”

“No…”

“You should make yourself, if you feel sick. You’ll feel better afterwards.”

“_Nooo_,” Eddie says, screwing his eyes shut. “Don’t make me throw up, I don’t want to, I hate it…”

Richie laughs. “I’m not going to _make you _throw up, Eds, I’m just saying…”

“How do I stop myself from throwing up?”

Richie pauses, considering. “Think happy thoughts.”

“Be fucking serious.”

“I am! Think happy thoughts!”

Eddie sighs but goes still, twisting his mouth up tight.

Richie suppresses a smile. “What are you thinking about?”

“Not throwing up.”

“Not happy enough,” Richie insists, clicking his tongue as he pulls one arm through the sleeve of his overshirt. “Happier than that.”

Eddie huffs. “Um… I’m sober again and the room isn’t spinning.”

“C’mon, Eds, you’re not even trying! Give it some fucking thought, man.”

Eddie goes quiet again. Then he exhales in frustration. “I don’t know. What do _you _think of?”

Richie laughs and tosses the limp overshirt on the ground and scratches his chin thoughtfully. “I think of…” he murmurs. “I think of… me. Only I’m Head Boy, and I’m holding the Quidditch Cup.”

Eddie scowls. “You’re lying. That doesn’t— It’s not even a real thing.”

Richie laughs. “Okay, fine, you caught me,” he says. “I guess I think of, like, I dunno… stuff like tonight. I’m having a good time, with people I love. You and Bev and Stan and everyone else. That’s my happy thought.” He shrugs. “Does that help?”

Eddie drags his arm back over his face. “Yes.”

“’Kay, good.” Richie pops the button of his jeans. “And heads up, I’m about to take my pants off. So if that’s your happy thought, you’re in luck.”

Eddie’s mouth snaps shut. After a moment, he says, “I won’t look.”

Richie drags down the zipper and shuck off his jeans so he’s in only his boxers. When he glances over, Eddie still has his arm resolutely plastered across his face.

“Not sure how much of you covering your eyes is because of the spins or because of my pantslessness, but I want to reassure you that I _do _have boxers on,” Richie says, pulling the covers back. He takes off his glasses and sets them on the floor and then gets in bed, sliding his legs under the sheets. “Although the hairiness of my thighs may offend the innocent.”

Eddie doesn’t move. He begins taking deep, rhythmic breaths, through his mouth.

“You got a happy thought yet?” Richie asks, teasingly.

“Yes.”

“What is it?”

“It’s none of your business, is what it is.”

Richie laughs. “I told you mine, you dick, and it was cheesy as fuck. You at least owe me yours.”

“Ugh, fine.” Eddie sighs. His arm remains where it is, hiding his face. “Mine was also from tonight,” he says reluctantly. “It was… It was that you stayed with me.”

Richie’s heart leaps into his throat. He rolls to face Eddie. “Yeah?”

“Yeah, I mean.” Eddie flaps his hand helplessly. “I did this to myself. Like, you guys weren’t forcing me to or anything, I just kept drinking and drinking and drinking, an’ I shouldn’t be surprised that I ended up way too drunk and wanting to vomit.” He draws in a deep breath and lets it out. “But you still stayed…”

“Of course, Eds,” Richie says. “I wouldn’t leave you here alone.”

Eddie goes silent. After a what feels like a long time, Richie hears him inhale another long breath through his mouth, this one shuddering and wet.

Richie sits bolt upright in bed and slams his glasses back on his nose. Eddie’s mouth is dragged down on the corners. One arm is clasped tightly across his eyes, the other is across his stomach, his hand tightly clenched in the fabric of his shirt.

“Eddie— Eds, are you—”

“No,” Eddie chokes. He rolls away, turning his back to Richie. His shoulders are trembling.

Richie swallows drily, his heart wound up tight. “Eds,” he says gently, “are you sure?”

Eddie doesn’t respond. He remains on his side, his shoulders shaking. Richie stares at him, feeling paralyzed.

“Richie,” says Eddie, so quiet that Richie has to strain to hear, because his ears are ringing from the club. “I think I’m really drunk.” He sniffs, shaky. “Being drunk makes you emotional, right?”

“It can, yeah,” Richie says. “It does for me.”

“I think it might for me, too. Because—” Eddie says, faltering. “Because I keep thinking how, if I was home, I think my mom would kill me.”

And Richie realizes _that’s_ what Eddie meant earlier. He meant _home _home. The States. Maine.

“Really?” he asks.

Eddie nods, coiling even tighter, and when he speaks again, his voice is so soft and quiet that Richie’s heart pounding in his chest drowns it out, and Richie can barely hear, and he knows he _needs _to.

“Eds,” Richie says gently, “my ears are still ringing, and I can barely hear you. Is it okay if I come over there?”

It hangs in the air for a moment before Eddie nods again, quickly, and Richie throws back his covers and crosses the room in one, two, three steps, his bare feet splaying on the cold stone floor. He settles on the bed, over the covers, his long legs stretched out behind Eddie’s, and belatedly he realizes he’s in his t-shirt and boxers, but he can’t bring himself to get up to put on his pants because Eddie is shaking so hard the bed is practically vibrating.

Richie puts a comforting hand on Eddie’s upper arm, and it’s hot, quivering beneath his palm. He hears Eddie draw in another shuddering breath and scrunch up tighter, bringing his knees toward his chest, and Richie, not knowing what else to do, runs his hand up and down Eddie’s arm, waiting.

After several long moments, Eddie sniffs loudly, wetly, and finally pulls his arm away from his face. He slowly shifts so he’s lying on his back, and Richie, propping himself up on one hand, withdraws his other arm to rest awkwardly along his own side. Eddie’s nose is red, his eyes wrinkled and shining, with some residual wetness around them. Richie wishes he could brush it away.

Congested and not looking at him, Eddie mutters, “My mom kinda sucks.”

Richie studies him—his dark, deep-set eyes; his thick brows, bowed upwards; his mouth, sucking in shaky lungfuls of air—and waits.

Eddie rubs at his dripping nose. “She always said she was looking out for me,” he says. “Taking care of me. If I ever got sick as a kid, ever got a cold, if my temperature went up even one fucking decimal point, she’d take me straight to the hospital. Because it meant I was sick. I was weak, and she could tell me what to do. That was how she took care of me.”

“Well,” Richie says slowly, softly, “that _does _suck. To use your words.” He brushes his thumb lightly over Eddie’s shoulder. His heart flip-flops when Eddie’s mouth quirks up ever so slightly. “Is that why you hate throwing up so much?”

Eddie nods, looking up at the ceiling. “Yeah. It was bad enough if I had a cough or a runny nose. If I threw up? I’d be out of school for like a whole week. Confined to the house, regular temperature-checking, flat Sprite and dry toast all day every day, even if I told her I felt fine.” He sighs, shuddery. “Honestly, I haven’t thrown up since I was like eight. Even if I felt like it, I’d do fucking anything not to.”

“Even think happy thoughts, which I know is not your forte.”

Eddie lifts one side of his mouth slightly higher. “Fuck you,” he murmurs, sounding strangely affectionate. It makes Richie’s heart beat strongly.

“So,” Eddie goes on, “she would say that— that she was taking care of me… but then she wouldn’t be there when I really needed her. If I had a cold, she was all, ‘You’ve always been sickly, Eddie-bear, you need your mother to take care of you,’ but if I did something that she didn’t agree with, suddenly I was on my own. Like when I went away to college. I had never been away from home, never even been outside of Derry without her. It was only like an hour and a half away, but she still refused to take me, because I was ‘abandoning’ her.” He inserts the air quotes with one hand and then lets it flop to the bed, against Richie’s thigh, where it singes. “You don’t even want to know the fight I had to have with her to come here.”

“Eddie…” Richie’s eyebrows knit together. His hand is on Eddie’s upper arm again without him remembering how. Eddie doesn’t move away. “I’m sorry. If we go out again, I can try to help you not drink so much, so you don’t have to throw up, or—”

“No,” Eddie says firmly. “You don’t have to do anything like that. You should just… do what you did tonight.”

Richie frowns. “What did I do tonight?”

Sidelong, Eddie’s red-ringed eyes meet Richie’s, and Richie realizes dully, as if from a distance, how close they are. “You stayed.”

The look Eddie gives him pierces through his ribs and burrows right down between his lungs. It settles there, blazing and curled up tight, molten like metal, burning so hot it makes him suck in a sharp breath. He stares at Eddie, his head suddenly swimming, and wants. He _wants_.

But not tonight.

_No_, he reminds himself, not _ever_. Not just because Eddie is drunk but because Eddie is _straight_. Eddie is straight, and he has a girlfriend who he Skypes with, who wants to know about his life and who he’s close with, and if he confides in Richie when he’s nearly blacked out, if he calls Richie his best friend, if he wants to spend time just the two of them, it just means that their friendship has changed. It doesn’t mean that _that _has changed.

Richie remembers then that he’s in bed with Eddie, in only a t-shirt and boxers, that his hand is still resting on Eddie’s arm, that Eddie’s hand is still flopped against his thigh. He closes his eyes, trying to center himself, but when he opens them, Eddie is still staring at him in that same way. The way that makes _Richie _feel like the room is spinning.

Richie swallows drily and withdraws his hand from Eddie’s arm. “You still feel sick?” he asks, and his voice is hoarse, raspy.

Eddie shakes his head, slowly. “No,” he breathes. His eyes meet Richie’s and then flicker down to his lips, and suddenly, irrationally, Richie feels certain that Eddie is going to kiss him.

Richie freezes, his breath catching in his throat, and Eddie— Eddie _knows_, Richie thinks madly, he _must_ know that he _could_, that Richie would let him, and— and Richie _wants_ him to know, he does, he does, because Eddie deserves to know that Richie would do anything for him, would stay, _forever_, or go, if Eddie asked, but he wants to stay, wants to be with him, wants to be close, and—

_If you’re close with someone, why wouldn’t you _tell_ me—_

Richie jerks backwards, the bed squealing as he scrambles out of it. He stands up so fast his vision swims with ink.

“Well, I’m beat!” he announces, trying to blink away the darkness. “I’m gonna sleep like the wasted tonight. Which is to say poorly.”

He stumbles shakily back over to his bed. As he gets back under the rumpled covers, he thinks he feels Eddie watching him, but when he looks over, his vision finally clearing, Eddie’s still lying on his back, staring at the ceiling.

Richie takes a deep breath and reaches over to the lamp. “Mind if I turn out the light?”

“Mm-mm.”

Richie twists the knob, casting the room in shadow. Again, he removes his glasses and lets them clatter lightly to the floor. He draws the covers up around his shoulders and squints up at the ceiling himself, taking a deep, shuddering breath of his own. His entire body is screaming with adrenaline.

“Hey,” he says into the darkened room.

“Hmm.” Eddie sounds half-asleep already.

“Uh, if you get up in the night and do have to vom, feel free to wake me up,” he whispers. “It’s a communal bathroom, so I could, like, hold the door closed and stuff if you want. Plus if it only happens once every fifteen years or whatever, I don’t wanna miss the show.”

That earns a quiet laugh. A laugh that eases the sparking live wires of Richie’s nerves, allowing him to settle under the scratchy blankets.

“You’re an idiot, Richie,” Eddie says fondly. “Shut up and go to sleep.”

Richie smiles and closes his eyes. “Anything for you, Eds.”

***

Richie wakes up gradually, feeling like he’s in pieces. His mouth is fuzzy, and his tongue is too big and lumpy inside it. His feet are sore and throbbing, and his skin… hurts? His skin hurts. What the fuck.

He cracks open a bleary eye.

Eddie is awake in the other bed, staring straight up at the ceiling. And he is _giggling_.

Richie groans loudly. The sound makes Eddie turn and look at him, and his face a pale smear in Richie’s vision.

“You awake?” he asks.

“Unfortunately,” Richie grumbles. “Why the hell are you laughing? Talk about a fucking one-eighty.”

Eddie snaps his mouth shut, but air escapes his lips as he tries to stifle another giggle. “Are you hungover?”

“Either that or I’m just about dying,” Richie groans, “in which case your laughter is especially inappropriate.”

“Oh.” Eddie takes in Richie’s state and tries to compose his expression into one of concern, but another grin breaks out. “I’m not hungover at all,” he blurts out. His voice is lilting, delighted.

“Fuck off, yes you are. You drank the entire bar last night.”

Eddie shakes his head. He rolls over on his side to face Richie and grins. “Nope,” he says, popping the P. “I feel totally fine. Ready to face the day.”

“Ugh,” Richie whines, rubbing a hand over his dry cheeks, flaky forehead. Eddie laughs again, and Richie glares at him. “And you think it’s cool to laugh at my plight because…?”

“Because my mom was wrong.”

Richie knits his eyebrows together. He reaches out, fumbling on the floor for his glasses, and jams them on, like seeing Eddie better will clear up what he said. “Sorry, Eds, I’m not my normal quick-witted self this morning. Like I said, I’m hungover as fuck. So you’re gonna have to explain.”

He saw Eddie grimace when Richie called himself _quick-witted_, like he wanted to say something, but he lets it go. His face is bright and pale in the morning sun filtering through the window, his brown eyes huge above his wan cheeks. He may not be _feeling_ hungover, but he certainly _looks_ like he had a night.

“My mom always told me that drinking _always _made you sick and hungover,” he says, “and that it would be worse for me than for other people because I’m, like, small and weak or whatever the fuck.”

Richie snorts. “Look, I know I say it as a joke a lot, but f’real, though, fuck your mom,” he says. “You’re small but you’re definitely not weak, Eds. I had to use all my strength to hold you back from fighting that guy who spilled his drink on my shoes while we were dancing.”

“Oh, fuck, I remember that,” Eddie breathes, aghast. “What was I thinking?”

“Something about the slipperiness being a safety hazard, I dunno.”

“Oh my god,” he groans, horrified. “Did I request ‘Party in the U.S.A.’? Like, a _bunch_ of times??”

Richie laughs. “Yes. And then you tried to get me and Bev to request it when the deejay told you to stop.”

“Fuck.” He giggles again, high-pitched and a little hysterical. He buries his face in his hands. “I feel like I’m going crazy, Richie,” he says, muffled.

“_Going_ crazy?” Richie echoes, teasing.

“I’m serious, man. I feel like I’m going insane.” The laughter is abruptly gone. Eddie drops his hands to cover only his mouth, staring, stricken, over his fingertips. “Like, what is Jordan doing to me? I’ve never been like this. Is this me? This isn’t me, is it? It _wasn’t_ me in Maine, but…”

Richie draws his brows together. “Hey, don’t worry about it, Eds,” he says soothingly. “You got drunk and had a good time last night. That doesn’t define you.”

Eddie keeps staring at him over his fingers, silent. Richie gets the feeling Eddie needs him to keep talking.

“And anyway, if it _is _you,” Richie continues, obliging, “and you’re the kind of person who, like, goes out on a friend’s birthday and has a fucking blast and dances the night away to Miley Cyrus, and doesn’t even pay for it the next morning? Except for, like, existentially, I guess…” He shrugs and gives him a lopsided smile. “Then that’s not a bad person to be, right? That’s actually pretty cool, I think.”

Eddie has dragged his hands away from his face, eyebrows lightly furrowed as if he’s listening hard to what Richie’s saying. He swipes his tongue across his lips, which look dry and chapped from a night of drinking and stand out red even across the room. Richie tries not to look.

After a moment, a smile curls slowly around Eddie’s mouth, like he caught Richie in a mistake. “So that means you think I’m cool,” he says.

Richie huffs out a laugh. “Ah, darn it, I gave it away,” he jokes. “Yeah, I think you’re cool, ya big nerd. Everyone knows having an identity crisis after _one _night of heavy drinking is the coolest thing a person can do.”

He throws the covers off his bare legs, swinging them out of bed as he sits up. His boxers are crinkled and riding up his thighs, goosebumps prickling in the chilly room. He squeezes his eyes shut and stretches his long arms up above his head, until he feels cool air under the hem of his t-shirt and a hears a light crack in his spine.

“Anyway, we oughta get moving,” he groans, feeling loose and lightheaded from the stretch. “I can’t remember what our check-out time is, but I bet our host families would love to know we’re alive. And we should both shower before we leave unless we want to go back home reeking of booze.” He opens his eyes and sees Eddie still staring at him, unmoving. He raises an eyebrow. “Whaddaya think, Eds? Shower?”

Eddie’s jaw drops, cheeks flushing. “T-together?” he stammers, looking terrified.

Richie bursts out laughing. “Holy shit, Eddie, where is your fucking head at this morning? I meant _separately_.” He waggles his eyebrows. “But I’m willing to be convinced.”

Eddie glowers, angry-red. “Shut the fuck up, asshole,” he says. “So I misunderstood you, so what? I drank like half my bodyweight last night.”

“Which isn’t—”

“—saying much,” Eddie finishes for him, mocking, “yeah, ha-ha, I’m _short_. You’re so fucking predictable.”

“See? I told you you were the same Eddie in there, after all. Angry and hilarious.” Richie grins and stands up, still shaking his head. “Shower together,” he repeats, laughing to himself. “You shoulda seen your fucking face, man. You looked like I whipped my dick out and asked you to sword fight or something.”

Eddie scrubs a hand over his face. “Jesus Christ, Richie, shut the fuck up for once. _You’re _giving me a fucking headache. Not the booze, _you_.”

“‘You gonna shower, Eds?’ ‘T-t-t-together!?’ Seriously, dude?”

“Shut _up_, Richie, and don’t call me Eds—”

“How about I call you the fucking, like, Mars Rover? You space cadet. I mean, what fucking planet were you on? Spagheptune?”

“Fucking terrible pun,” Eddie grouses. “Fucking stupid.”

“Yeah, I know, not my best,” Richie concedes, bobbing his head. “I’ll work on it in the shower.” He grabs a thin towel and some packaged soap off the dresser and reaches for the doorknob. Then he turns back, grinning over his shoulder. “So, did you wanna join, or…?”

“Get the fuck out, Richie!”

Laughing, Richie darts out the door. He hears the thud of Eddie’s pillow hitting it just after it closes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks so much to @jajs for the beta reading this and every other chapter! i’ve been forgetting to thank her lately and i’m ashamed. just know that i’m nothing without her. <3
> 
> on god, we’re gonna get these boys to syria next chapter.
> 
> i’m @tempestbreak_ on twitter if anyone wants to talk about these clown movie dumbasses!
> 
> arabic glossary:  
_ma sha allah_: lit., god has willed it [said when expressing appreciation, joy, praise, usually as an exclamation]  
_shabaab_: lit. youths; usually used to refer to teenaged-to-early-twenties boys and young men who hang out in public places  
_yaa_: [marker of address, no direct translation but said when you’re addressing someone directly, as in “yaa ritchee”]  
_yalla_: hurry up; let’s go


	12. february v: cool of a temperate breeze from dark skies to wet grass

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from “pink bullets” by the shins
> 
> extremely light cw for richie being purposefully crass in this one. they play some drinking games (would you rather and never have i ever), and richie tries his best to make it as gross as possible.
> 
> i have some semi-extensive historical and political notes of background information on this chapter. they’re in the end notes, after the typical arabic glossary, if you’re interested. :)

“Whaddaya think, Eds?” Richie asks, sidling up next to him. “Anything strike your fancy?”

Eddie stares at the wall of liquors before them, lining shelves floor to ceiling. “I could not have less of a clue,” he says sincerely.

They’re standing in the duty-free market in the no-man’s land between Jordan and Syria. It’s been at least two hours, maybe three, since the cab Saleh ordered them dropped them off at the border, and their best intelligence says they have probably another two, if they’re lucky. Protocol at the border is their passports have to be copied and faxed to Damascus, approved, and faxed back to the border crossing. Being American does not speed the process.

Richie and Eddie have been in and out of this market twice already, the first time to buy some snacks, the second just to browse. Stan, Mike, and Ben are waiting at the table they posted up at outside, where it’s chilly under the yellow lights.

“I still don’t really know what I like,” Eddie goes on, chewing his lip. “Vodka?”

“You need a mixer for it. You got room in your backpack?”

Eddie frowns. “No.”

“We could always buy some in Damascus, or Palmyra,” says Richie, sliding down the aisle. “Otherwise, it’s beer or wine.”

“Just as long as it’s not Petra,” Eddie grumbles, following him.

The two of them pick out a bottle of red and a bottle of white, so Eddie can try both. Richie knows absolutely fuck-all about wine other than that he and Carla once drank a whole 1.5-liter Sutter Home Moscato straight from the bottle sitting on her fire escape while she patted his shoulder and listened to him cry about his ex. The memory is bitter, but the wine was sweet, and cheap as hell. Wine is not nearly as cheap here, even duty-free, but they still buy it. Richie tucks the white into his backpack while Eddie puts the red in his.

When they return to the table, Ben is saying, “I think invisibility. It would just be so convenient, especially if things you touched also turned invisible… Oh, hey, guys. What’d you get?”

“Wine, so we can get crunk,” says Richie, pulling out one of the white plastic chairs and plopping himself back down in it. “Miss us?”

“Like a hole in the head,” says Stan.

“We’re playing Would You Rather,” Ben explains, “to pass the time.”

“Ooh, my favorite,” says Richie. “What’s the question?”

“Would you rather be able to fly or turn invisible?” says Mike.

“Ah, classic,” says Richie, nodding. He turns to Eddie. “You can go first, Eds. Flight or invisibility?”

“Don’t call me Eds.” Eddie sits down at the end of the table, his eyebrows knotted, pensive. “Invisibility seems more practical,” he says slowly. “You could go pretty much anywhere without people knowing. No one could stop you.”

“Pfft, practical, schmactical,” says Richie, leaning on the table. “You’re not buying a fucking car, man, this is a hypothetical scenario. What do you _want_?”

Eddie frowns deeper, biting his lip for several seconds. “Then, I guess… flight,” he says, looking up with a slight smile. “It would be fun. The freedom.”

“_Hurriya_,” Richie exclaims exultantly. “And seeing you Peter Pan around would be rad as hell.”

“All right, what about you, Rich?” Stan asks, nodding towards him. “Flight or invisibility?”

“That’s an easy one,” says Richie, leaning back in his chair. “Invisibility. You know how many fucking pranks I could pull? You’d all have wedgies right now.”

“We’re sitting down,” says Stan.

“That’s how sneaky I’d be if I was invisible. You wouldn’t know until you stood up.”

“Oh, so you’d just be an entirely different person if you could turn invisible,” says Eddie, jokingly.

“Pretty much.” Richie grins and grabs the Pringles tube from Mike, popping one in his mouth. “Okay, did everyone answer? What’s the next question? Mikey, Staniel?”

“The nicknames,” Stan groans.

“Tell me about it,” says Eddie.

“At least yours are clearly based on your names,” says Ben. “I’m Haystack.”

“Do you not like Haystack?” Richie asks, turning to him.

Ben reddens a little. “I guess I just don’t know where it came from.”

“Your hair was all staticky that night in Lebnani Snack,” says Richie, holding his hands up to his scalp and sticking his fingers straight up, electrocuted. “Like hay.”

“Oh.” Ben smiles. “Then I guess I don’t mind.”

“We need to come up with a nickname for _you_, Tozier,” says Stan, leaning back. “Give you a taste of your own medicine.”

“Jus’ cawll me Biiig Dick,” Richie says, slipping into a Texan Cowboy Voice. They all roll their eyes. “What? It’s short for Richard!”

“Oh! Here’s a good question for the game,” says Mike, leaning forward. “_Would you rather_… be yourself now, or the ruler of a small country 2500 years ago?”

They settle down then and go around, giving their answers in turn. After that, Stan asks whether they would rather be able to talk to birds or be able to talk to fish. Then Eddie, hemming and hawing when he’s put on the spot, asks whether they would rather only eat dry toast for the rest of their lives (assuming it gave you all the necessary vitamins and nutrients, of course) or never be able to eat the same thing more than once, and that sends Richie into a frenzy of coming up with loopholes that drive both Eddie and Stan to the brink.

“Would it count as something different if I had a hot dog with ketchup one day and a hot dog with mustard the other? If I have mustard on my hot dog, does that mean I can never have mustard on anything else? Do spicy brown and honey Dijon count as two different foods, or does the evil genie forcing me to do this categorize them both as mustard?”

“Just answer the fucking question,” Eddie sighs, exasperated, “without trying to find a way out of it.”

“You’re ignoring the spirit of the question,” says Stan. “You’re purposely, willfully ignoring the spirit of the question.”

Finally, Richie declares he’d rather have something new every day, same as Mike, and then it’s his turn. He sits up straight, rubbing his hands together gleefully.

“All right,” he says, heavily emphasizing each word. “_Would you rather_…”

“I’m scared,” laughs Mike.

“…_fuck_…”

“Dear _Lord_,” Stan groans.

“…a person who has no front, just two backs on either side of their body, I’m talkin’ spine and shoulder blades,” says Richie, “or a person with one single, perfect boob, in the center of their chest but there’s an eye where the nipple’s supposed to be.”

Everyone stares at him in horror. He grins back.

“What. The. _Fuck_, _Richie_??” Eddie exclaims, his face screwed up in disgust.

“I think I’d choose eye-boob,” Richie muses, “because the eyes are the window to the soul.”

“What a romantic,” says Mike.

But Eddie is karate-chopping like crazy as Richie grins. “I cannot believe the fucking _garbage_, the _trash _that comes out of your mouth, I swear to _god_ you have no fucking filter, do you even _listen _to yourself—”

“Hey, wait,” says Stan, perking up. “That’s a good one.” He fixes Richie with an amused stare. “Trashmouth.”

Richie’s jaw drops, as Eddie bursts into laughter. “Trashmouth!” he exclaims. “How appropriate.”

“Why would that be appropriate!?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” drawls Eddie, hard-edged. “Maybe because of all the times you’ve discussed the very specific sex acts you want to perform on my mom?”

“Out of romance! I’m a romantic, Mikey said it!” Everyone around the table makes a noise of disbelief. Richie’s jaw drops even farther. “I _am_!”

“Says the man who just uttered the words, ‘I think I’d choose eye-boob’,” says Stan.

Richie tries to glare but breaks into a laugh instead. “All right, you got me there,” he says. “But I do think I could show them a good time. And they could use all three eyes to see it.”

In near unison, all four of them shout, “Trashmouth!”

***

They pass the time for another two hours, waiting for their visas to be approved. Stan vetoes Richie’s attempts to play Would You Rather the way he’s used to playing it with Carla (“If you start it with ‘Would you rather _fuck_,’ you are fucking _excused _from the game, Trashmouth.”), but Richie enjoys attempting to get around it (“Would you rather _be fucked by_…” “Would you rather _make love to_…”) because whenever he does it, Eddie gets this spark in his eye and his hand reaches out to smack Richie on the arm or the shoulder or the chest while he tries not to laugh.

Then, they’re called back in, and everything’s a flurry. They scramble to collect their bags and throw away their empty tubes of Pringles, their empty bottles of mango juice. They burst back into the visa office. They’re told their visas have gone through. Now they must find a taxi driver who will take five passengers to Damascus in his old yellow sedan. One of the half-dozen cabbies smoking beneath the concrete overhang is charmed enough by their ability to speak Arabic that he agrees, so they pile in, four to the back with Stan in the front and Eddie crushed in the center, sitting half on top of Richie, because he’s the shortest and he’s supposed to plaster himself across the rest of them if the driver gives him the signal.

It’s still another hour and a half to Damascus, and it’s late and pitch-black outside, but the driver is cheery, offering them all cigarettes out of his pack and laughing when Ben’s face turns green on the tobacco. Richie takes one, too, to be polite, and because he’d love one, honestly, but he tries his best to blow the smoke forward rather than back at Eddie, whose hip is riding on Richie’s thigh, burning it and making it sweat.

They barrel along the highway, through the Syrian countryside, putting miles and miles behind them. They can’t _see _the desert change to grassy farmland but somehow they can _feel _it, that they’re leaving behind the parched climes of Amman and going north, north, to clear air, to verdure, to ancient Damascus and before they know it, Damascus herself rises before them, so dark she’s near-indistinguishable from the midnight sky except that the city has more stars, more lights, bright sparks of jasmine in the dark brush of the city’s hills and halls, thousands upon thousands of them, twinkling at them through the dusty windshield.

“Welcome to Dimashq,” the cab driver says, in magnanimous English, lifting a hand in gesture.

“**_It’s beautiful_**,” says Mike, quiet.

Richie leans forward, his knobby elbows on the back of either front seat, craning his neck low to get a glimpse beneath the rearview mirror. “Wow,” he breathes, eyes greedy.

“**_Nicer than Amman?_**” asks the driver, smiling. By his tone, Richie can tell he knows the answer.

Richie nods wordlessly, as does Stan, and Richie can’t see the rest of them behind him, but he knows they’re nodding too. It feels as though after years of dredging the dark ocean floor, their submarine has arrived at a luminous Atlantis, slumbering but promising beauty. Richie wants to press his face to the window glass and eat it up with his eyes, ravenous. Even in the dark there’s—there’s _something_, a _feeling_ that it stirs deep in his guts to trundle through the narrow streets of the old city, not so different from those in Amman yet somehow another world entirely—less dusty, maybe; less engineered; less _intentional_. Belonging as they do to the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world, how could these streets be anything but defiant upshoots, olive trees cropping up within the city walls, rooted by the Grecian grids imposed millennia before and long since overgrown by countless willful generations. They gaze at it.

It’s long past midnight by the time the cab driver drops them at their hostel, a lanky building on a twig of a side-street, with three tall stained-glass windows marking the second floor. When they check in and stumble upstairs, they discover those windows belong to their room: a large cube with tall ceilings and five twin beds, almost the same wireframes and heavy brown blankets that Richie recognizes from the night of Bev’s birthday. Richie flings himself on one in the far corner, and Eddie chooses one on the wall perpendicular to his, digging immediately for a toothbrush and pajama pants.

They’re too tired to talk much, other than to make vague noises of pleasure—as they pass each other in the hallway, at the door to the cramped closet bathroom—at arriving, at having arrived.

***

Richie wakes with a start in the cold dawn—at the same time as Eddie, in the bed across the way; at the same time as Ben in the corner, and Mike, and Stan—as the stained-glass windows of their room boom and vibrate with the deep voice of the muezzin announcing the call to morning prayer. A rich crescendo (_AllaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH_) that rocks and clatters the wire frames of their beds. A short swoop (_hu akbar!_) down and up, up, like an exclamation point. Almost as one, the five of them relax back into their creaking mattresses.

Richie closes his eyes again and rolls over, listening. It was too dark last night to notice the mosque, but it’s clearly close enough, loud enough to wake them up, even now they’re all so used to sleeping through it at home. This muezzin has a nice voice, seems not to be a recording but a real-life man in the neighborhood minaret, likely colder even than they are, huddled under heavy brown blankets, his breath coming in puffs over the microphone as he sings, calling, calling.

***

The next time Richie wakes up, Ben is the only other one in the room, sitting up in his nest of sheets, bleary-eyed and scruffy-haired, as Richie reaches for his glasses.

“I don’t think our phones work here,” says Ben, looking up from his.

“Huh?”

“Our phones don’t work here. Or at least mine doesn’t, I don’t think. Try to text me.”

Richie fumbles his out of his backpack and checks it. The display looks the same—the signal bars, and the 0 missed calls, and **Zain **written at the top, the mobile company—but when Richie tries to text Ben, the message fails.

“No dice,” says Richie, yawning, and tosses the brick back in the front pocket. He swings his legs over the bed and reaches for his crumpled jeans. “Where are the others?”

Ben is still frowning at the phone in his lap. “Downstairs at breakfast, I think.”

“Shall we join them?”

“What? Oh. Yeah, sure.” Ben looks up, puts on a smile. “No use staring at this thing, willing it to work, I suppose.”

They pull on pants and sweatshirts and take turns in the closet-sized bathroom down the frigid tiled hall. Downstairs, they find the others, huddled in white plastic chairs around a small table, a basket of bread and samovar of coffee in the center. It appears the proprietor drew up a gas-powered space heater for them, but Eddie is still wearing his leather jacket even at breakfast, his hands stuffed under his armpits, his shoulders curled inward.

“_Sabah al-kheir_,” says Ben, his accent noticeably improved since last time Richie heard him.

“_Sabah an-noor_,” answer the other three. Mike gives a little wave.

“Looks like Eddie the Yeti shed his winter coat too early,” Richie remarks with a grin, drawing up a chair beside him.

“Shut up,” Eddie gripes. “It’s fucking cold in here.”

“Well, I’m perfectly peachy with the heater,” says Richie, fishing in the pocket of his hoodie and pulling out a handful of yellow knit. “Want my hat? Just for breakfast, mind you, I need it later.”

Eddie eyes it dubiously. Longingly. “When was the last time you washed it?”

“Mama just washed it a week or two ago, actually, along with Bill’s and our host brothers’ winter stuff.”

Eddie considers it. Then, with a huff, he holds out an expectant hand. “Okay,” he says begrudgingly. “But only because I know I’m showering tonight.”

“What a favor you’re doing me, Spaghetti,” says Richie, tongue in cheek. He forgoes Eddie’s hand entirely and jams the hat on over his ears, laughing when Eddie jumps. “You gotta pull hair out from under it, though,” he says, adjusting it so a wisp of hair peeks out against his forehead. “That’s the fashionable way to wear it. Ah, _there _ya go.” He gives Eddie a satisfied smile and a pat on the head, right at the crown, and he sits back, pulse racing as he brings the tiny cup of Turkish coffee to his lips. Trying to ignore how Eddie’s huge eyes linger on him for minutes afterwards.

***

Around the cramped table, a tourist map spread before them, they make their sightseeing plans for the day. Ben wants to see Ottoman-era architecture, he says. Mike wants to see churches and the tomb of Saladin, leader of the Islamic forces against the Crusaders. Stan wants to walk the old Jewish quarter, slowly emptied over the decades since Israel’s founding. Richie wants to see cool shit, and maybe buy some cool shit, too. Eddie, he says, just wants to see.

Together, Eddie and Ben devise a walking tour for them of the old city, west to east. Clad in jackets and carrying cameras, they set off.

Their tour begins at Souq al-Hamidiyah, the largest market in Syria, constructed in the eighteenth century at the edges of the Roman Temple to Jupiter, which now forms one of the souq’s entrances. Young and fresh with the dewy morning, they pass under those ancient arches and into a madding covered market, a vaulted ceiling and a curving coliseum of shops tunneling seamlessly away, strung up with flags and banners for the prophet’s birthday. They stand in line for ice cream studded with warm pistachios, despite the cold, and they eat it strolling. Ben, Mike, and Stan linger at a rack of postcards while Richie, to his surprise, remembers to buy a scarf for his mother.

“She’s supposed to visit, apparently,” he says idly to Eddie beside him, who is running a palm over black, embroidered fabric.

Eddie’s eyebrows lift nearly to the brim of Richie’s hat. He hasn’t given it back, and Richie hasn’t asked for it. “Seriously? Your mom wants to come here?”

“Right? That’s what I said to her,” Richie says. “But yeah, ever since she and the old man decided on therapy instead of divorce, she’s been on a big reconnecting-with-the-son kick. _Shukran_,” he says to the shopkeep, receiving the scarf, emerald green and folded in a paper bag.

Eddie’s eyes are strange, regarding him. Richie thinks they have been all day here. Sanded down, smooth. “Your parents almost got divorced?” he asks.

“Eh, it’s not that dramatic.” Richie shrugs. “They kinda just lived at a low simmer of annoyance with each other for years and decided to finally do something about it once I went to college and wasn’t around to distract them. Options seemed to be divorce or therapy; they picked therapy.”

“That’s sounds…” Eddie trails off, at a loss. “I don’t think I know anyone who’s gone to therapy where I’m from,” he finally says.

“Well, that’s California for ya,” says Richie brightly. He slaps Eddie on the back, steering him. “Now, shall we go find the others? I think I see Mike.”

When they exit the covered souq, the silver sky is beginning to spit rain, cold and meager. Richie draws his jacket around him more tightly, imagining Baby Taz and his pizza stretched tight across his back as they slouch into the vaulted entrance of the Umayyad Mosque. The courtyard is brimming with visitors, prayer-goers, there not only because it is Friday but because it is Muhammad’s birthday, so much so that even Richie feels intrusive and antsy to leave, giving only a perfunctory appreciation to the stone reliefs and blue-and-yellow tile arabesques while he waits for Stan to take Mike’s picture with one of the minarets in the background.

Just outside the mosque is the tomb of Saladin. The mausoleum is in a small, vaulted stone room; each of the four walls is capped with an arch, and the entire building with a cupola. The walls are constructed of alternating courses of masonry—horizontal lines of beige, brown, black—up to the base of the arch, where they transform to blue-and-white arabesques, swooping calligraphy that Richie can only just read. An ornate wrought-iron chandelier hangs down in the center over two coffins: one white marble, the other draped in green-and-gold velvet.

“The marble empty tomb,” Ben reads from its plaque, “is a gift from Wilhelm II, the king of Germany, to conqueror al-Sultan Salah al-Din al-Ayoubi when he visits Damascus in the reign of Othmanian Sultan Abdul Hamid II in 1898.”

Richie sidles over to the other one, draped in green, and reads: “The true grave for vortuous body of conqueror as-Sultan Salah ad-Din al-Ayoubi, 1137 to 1193 AD.”

Stan raises an eyebrow. “‘Vortuous’?”

“Look.” Richie points at the plaque. “That’s what it says, man.”

“Well, I’m not gonna be picky,” says Mike, taking a picture of it. “It’s Saladin.”

After that, they wander more aimlessly. Their map, now damp from rain and creased from repeated openings and closings, stays snug in Eddie’s back pocket, and Eddie uses it to keep them making their way east, but they are in no hurry. They turn down every side-street that strikes their fancy, stumbling upon small mosques and schools, empty for the holiday. They spend fifteen minutes in a woodworking shop, where the woodworker, surprised and delighted among towering stacks of thin, even wood strips, ushers them in and proudly shows them a polished wooden chessboard he crafted from scratch. They spend a long time thanking him, telling him, truthfully, how beautiful everything is, using all the superlatives they know and knowing they aren’t enough. “If I had the cash,” Ben laments, his voice thick with emotion, as he ducks his head below the door frame on their way out.

They see the Ottoman-era architecture Ben wants to see, as it’s everywhere, all around them; they find the churches Mike wants to photograph, St. Mary’s and St. George’s; they walk the former Jewish quarter with a quiet Stan. Richie and Eddie trail far behind along those silent streets, and Richie suspects both of them had the same idea, that together they might be too loud for this somber moment, yet neither of them speaks. They just stroll, side-by-side, elbows nearly brushing, taking it in together.

***

It’s growing dark by the time they leave the Jewish quarter, so they decide to find somewhere nearby for dinner. As they sit at their table, Ben clears his throat, a little awkwardly. “Is it, uh, is it okay if you guys get my meals and tickets and stuff and I just pay for our hostel in Palmyra with my card?” he asks. “I don’t have much Syrian money left on me, and the ATM fees my bank’s charging here are killing me.”

“Hm, a little presumptuous of you, Haystack, expecting us to pay for you on the first date,” Richie says. “I hope you know you’ll have to put out.”

Eddie glares at him. “You already used that line, asshole.”

Richie shrugs. “It’s a classic.”

“No problem, Ben,” Mike says kindly. “We know you’re good for it.”

“Okay, thanks,” Ben breathes, relaxing a little. “The hostel and all the cab rides and tickets and things have really cleaned me out. I should have thought to change more money.”

“I know what you mean,” grumbles Eddie, picking up a menu. “Amman is already expensive enough. I’m horrified whenever I look at my account.”

“I have the money in the bank,” says Ben. “It’s really just the ATM fees. I’d rather not take out any more money here if I can help it.” He chuckles a little. “I wonder how Bev and Bill are in Lebanon. They were both talking about money a lot before they went.”

“I’m surprised Bill went at all, to be honest,” says Stan, not looking up from his own menu. “He’s been saving up to go home for spring break since… well, since October, at least.”

“I guess he and Bev must really like each other, then,” says Ben, and no one has anything to say to that.

They order and then they eat. It’s traditional Levantine fare, eaten communally: grape leaves stuffed with rice, fried dough with ground meat inside, dips made of olive oil and smoky ground eggplant. When they’ve eaten their fill, one by one, they fall back in their chairs, sated, and chase it with sweet mint tea, chatting leisurely.

“I need more pictures of myself here,” Eddie says.

“What’re you talking about, Eds?” Richie asks, grinning. “Bill got plenty of pictures of you doing the ol’ karate chop at Bev’s birthday.” He mimes it.

Eddie turns red. “I mean pictures where I’m not completely wasted. My mom’s gonna want to see something when I go home.” He begins chewing his lip as he says it, looking away.

(_I can’t go home, though, I don’t think. I think my mom would kill me._)

“Ahhh, I see,” Richie says keenly, nodding like a sage when Eddie raises his head. “You want one’a them study abroad profile pics.”

“What?”

Mike leans in. “You mean like the ones people take in front of, like, the Eiffel Tower? Or in Pisa so makes it look like they’re holding up the tower?”

“Ding-ding-ding, _bizzabt!_” Richie exclaims, nodding. “And then they immediately become their profile picture on Facebook. Maybe even LinkedIn, if it’s fancy enough.”

“Something that I could put on LinkedIn would be perfect for my mom,” says Eddie.

“No problem, I’ll be your photo director,” Richie says, rubbing his palms together. “But first you gotta dress the part.”

Eddie frowns at him. “What part?”

“The pretentious college student in the Arab world. First question: Do you have a keffiyeh?”

Mike bursts out laughing. “Oh Lord, white study-abroad boys and their keffiyehs,” he chuckles, shaking his head.

“The keffiyeh’s the checkered scarf thing, right?” Ben asks.

“_Aywa, yaa _Ben,” says Richie, “and it is one-hundred-percent fuckin’ necessary for an Arab-world study abroad profile pic. Especially a black one; it says, ‘I’m an edgy free-thinker who supports Palestine’.”

“Is that what the black ones mean? I didn’t know the different colors meant anything,” Eddie says.

“Ah ah ah.” Richie waggles his finger at Eddie. “That’s not what Study Abroad Boy says. Study Abroad Boy says—” he throws his shoulders back and looks down his nose “—‘Oh, you didn’t know the different colors _mean_ something? How unenlightened.’”

“You probably shouldn’t do a black one,” Stan says stiffly, sipping his tea. “It’s a little insensitive. To both sides.”

“A red one, then,” says Richie. “It’s more Jordanian, anyway. I think I’ve seen King Abdullah rockin’ one in some pictures.”

“King Hussein, too,” says Ben.

“So I have to find a Jordanian keffiyeh, in Syria, and take a picture where I look like a pretentious asshole,” Eddie says sardonically. “Great.”

“Your mom will love it,” says Richie. “We’ll put it up on the fridge.”

Eddie glares at him. “Don’t say ‘we’ like you’re involved somehow.”

Richie shrugs, lifting the glass of tea to his smirking mouth. “One day you’ll accept me into your family, Eds.”

***

The night is pitch black when they arrive back at the hostel, but they still have hours to go before they have to leave. On Saleh’s recommendation, they plan to take the overnight bus to Palmyra to see the ruins at dawn. It means that once they pack, they have little else to do but wait, and perhaps try to sleep.

“To be honest, I think I’d rather just stay up,” Richie says, “and sleep on the bus.”

“Speak for yourself,” Eddie sniffs, sliding under the covers of his bed, but his eyes are alert, observing, and Richie can somehow tell that rolling over with the blankets over his head is the last thing on his mind.

“We could play a game,” Ben suggests.

“As long as it’s not Would You Rather, I’m in,” says Stan, with a look at Richie. Richie lifts his shoulders and makes a _What did _I _do? _face.

“Eddie and I bought that wine at the border,” he says, pulling the bottle of white out of his backpack and holding it up with a grin. “We could play Kings. Anyone have a deck of cards?”

No one has cards, so they decide to play Never Have I Ever instead. Stan, Ben, and Richie drag their beds together in a vague triangle in the center of the room, and Eddie and Mike join them—Eddie on Ben’s and Mike on Stan’s. Eddie pulls the bottle of red out of his pack, too, and holds it expectantly in his lap.

That’s when they collectively realize they have no corkscrews.

Richie nearly doubles over laughing at his own lack of foresight, especially with Eddie looking at him in puzzlement, so he reaches across the beds into Eddie’s lap and shoves his thumb down the neck of the green bottle until the cork drops out the bottom with a little _pop! _and bobs, floating, in the black, sloshing wine. Eddie lets out a surprised “oh!” as it bursts forth.

“It’ll be a little annoying,” Richie says apologetically, leaning back onto his bed to do the same to the bottle of white, “but it should be fine. We just have to finish both of these tonight.” He glances up at Eddie, sucking on his wet thumb and grinning around it. Eddie is still staring at the bottle in his lap. “You up for it, Eds?”

Eddie flinches and looks back at him, an unreadable expression on his face. “Huh? I’m— I’m up. Yes.”

And Richie would respond to that, maybe ask if Eddie’s all right, if he really does want to sleep (_if drinking wine straight from the bottle is making him nervous about throwing up_) but the rest of them seem unaffected by the hugeness of Eddie’s eyes, the strangeness of his taut shoulders, because Mike rubs his hands together and says, “All right, I’ll start. Never have I ever been in love.”

“Fuck,” Richie laughs, giving his head a shake to focus. “If I had to take a drink for every time that happened, I think I’d be gone already.” He takes a big swig and then holds out the bottle to Ben, who’s reaching for it. “You know, because I’m such a romantic,” he says, pretending not to watch as Eddie hesitates for a long moment before taking the tiniest sip of his, grimacing.

“Hold up, Trashmouth,” Stan says, raising a hand as he sips the bottle Ben passes his way. “You know love and horniness are two different things, right?”

“As if you have room to talk, Stanley,” Richie shoots back, as the others chuckle. “Was love part of your latest OS upgrade? Or did you have to pick up the CD-ROM at CompUSA?”

“CompUSA, wow,” Ben mutters.

“Love is part of the basic human existence, Trashmouth,” Stan says airily, “which I wouldn’t expect a junkyard dog like you to understand.”

“Hey, now, no one here is a dog.”

“Thank you for defending my honor, Mikey.”

“Yeah, dogs are definitely capable of love,” Eddie interjects. “Richie’s more like a junkyard raccoon.”

“Hey!”

“Or an opossum,” Stan suggests. Eddie laughs.

“All right, all right, trash the Trashmouth, I get it,” Richie says, screwing up his mouth into a sardonic smile. “Let’s just move on, huh? Ben, I believe you’re up next. Are you guys ready for this one?” he asks, turning to Stan and Eddie. “Because Ben’s gonna absolutely roast you right now. Here we go. Ben. Put them in the fucking ground. Do it for me, Ben.”

Ben looks a little nervous. “All right, um…” he says, thinking. “Never have I ever… kissed a boy.”

And Richie is surprised to find he’s surprised. Perhaps because it came from Ben, and so innocently, not sly, or targeted. He ran a risk, playing this game, and with people he knows but doesn’t; he knew it could come time to decide (trust, distrust; honesty, deceit) and no longer leave it unsaid. And in another time, in another place, with other people, he may have chosen deceit but, truth be told, he made his decision about _these_ people, these friends, these Losers (Stan, and Mike, and Ben, and Eddie, and— _Eddie_) long ago.

So Richie allows himself to stare at Ben, his jaw dropping. “Ben, how _could _you?” he cries dramatically. “This is a _betrayal_, Ben!”

Ben’s shoulders go up to his ears, cowering. “I’m sorry, I didn’t really know what you wanted me to do,” he says, laughing.

“Obviously choose something that only Stan and Eddie would have to drink for, _Ben_.”

Ben’s eyebrows twitch for a split second before he understands. “I didn’t know you would have to drink for that!”

“Oh really? What about me screams ‘straight’ to you, Benjamin? Because I have never been more offended in my life.”

“Just the other day you were saying how Diyala at the front desk is super cute!”

“Because she _is_, but like, so is Joseph Gordon Levitt,” Richie says. “You really expect me to kiss _just girls_? When boys as cute as Eddie Spaghetti over there are out in the world?”

“Not my name. Even a little.”

“Well, it is _a little_,” Stan mutters. Eddie glares at him.

“Thank you for your support, Stanley,” Richie says. Finally, he reaches for the bottle of red and takes a sip, as is required per the rules of the game. “Anyway, now that we have that cleared up and ol’ heteronormative Haystack here has learned never to _assume_”—Ben utters a rushed, very sincere apology, which Richie simply waves away—“who else drinks for that one? I must know.” He whips his head back and forth eagerly, like a cartoon lookout.

After a moment, Stan raises an eyebrow and, staring directly at Richie, stoically takes a sip from the bottle of white.

“Ohoho, dear reader!” Richie exclaims in delight, leaning forward with his hands on his knees. “It looks like Uncle Haystack had some idea of Stanley’s kissing history after all!”

But Richie is truly _floored _when, but a second later, Mike leans over to take the bottle from Stan.

“Hell yeah, Mikey,” Richie says. He turns to Ben and Eddie. “Looks like you non-boy-kissers are in the minority. And please let me know if either of you would like to change that, because I have received only positive reviews.”

Eddie’s face turns red. “Shut up, Richie. No one wants to fucking kiss you. They’d probably get meningitis or something from your trash mouth.”

“Hey, now,” Richie says defensively. “The inside of my mouth is perfectly clean; it’s the stuff that comes out of it that’s trash.”

“That’s the stupidest fucking thing you’ve ever said. The human mouth can be home to up to six _billion_—”

“If what I said is so stupid, I think I just proved my point! The name ‘Trashmouth’ is a comment on the quality of the things I say, not the cleanliness of my mouth.”

“To be fair, I think the name ‘Trashmouth’ works on multiple levels,” Stan says.

“If I was going to kiss someone here,” Ben says thoughtfully, cutting off Eddie’s _bacteria of the human mouth _tirade, “it would probably be Mike.”

Mike puts a hand to his heart. “Ben, I’m honored.”

Richie falls over on his bed. “And I’m _dead_,” he announces. “Ben, your words have killed me. Eddie loaded the gun with his Trashmouth slander and now you’ve pulled the trigger.”

“It’s nothing against you, Richie,” Ben rushes to say—sweet Ben, who can’t insult anyone even as a goof. “I just think Mike would be nice about it. I’d be too intimidated to kiss Stan, and _you_ would make some joke about how, like, Eddie’s mom kisses better.”

“Well, there’s no comparison. Mrs. K’s kissing technique is beyond reproach.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Eddie says. “You know what? I’d kiss Mike, too.”

“Spaghetti! What about all the germs in _Mike’s_ mouth?”

“It’s worth it to spite you.”

Stanley nods coolly. “I would also kiss Mike.”

Richie sits up and throws his hands in the air. “You’ve already kissed a boy, Stanley! That wasn’t the thought exercise!”

“I know, but I wanted to make it explicit that I would still choose Mike over you.”

For a second time, Richie’s jaw drops open indignantly. “I have never been so attacked!”

Mike’s face flushes pleasantly. “Guys, you’re flattering me. I’m not even that good of a kisser, I’m sure.”

“Ugh, Mikey, your modesty is making me look even worse,” Richie groans. “But since Stan has opened up this can of worms, who would _you _kiss, O Resident Boy-Kissing God?”

Mike looks up at the ceiling thoughtfully. “I mean, since they’re asking, I guess Ben, Stan, and Eddie.”

Everyone groans at that.

“Not an option,” Stan says, shaking his head.

“Yeah, you have to choose one person,” Eddie insists, like he’s suddenly all for it. “Play the game.”

Mike chuckles. “It’s kind of a weird game but all right,” he says. “In that case… Richie.”

Richie perks up. “Finally! Someone sees the light.”

“Just to make him feel included,” Mike continues with a grin.

Richie falls back on his bed as everyone else laughs. “I don’t want your pity kisses, Michael!”

“I bet a pity kiss from Mike beats a real kiss from a Trashmouth any day.”

“I’m already _dead_, Edward, you don’t have to spit on my body.”

“All right, guys, I think we’ve been mean enough to Richie,” Ben says kindly. He smiles. “Also, he’s also the only one left who hasn’t answered the question.”

“Yeah, Richie, who would you kiss?” Mike asks.

“Well, if you all must know,” Richie says, sitting back up. He looks regally at each of them in turn, building suspense. “I would kiss Eddie.”

Eddie’s face turns bright red as the others turn to him, eager for a reaction. “I-insert a ‘your mom’ joke here,” he stammers, crossly.

“No, no, seriously, Eds,” Richie says, earnestly. “You’re cute, you’re mean; you’re like exactly my type. And despite what you all seem to think, I could show you a pretty good kissing time. It would also give me great pleasure to show up Mike.”

Mike chuckles. Eddie looks stunned.

“Plus, it would be a great scientific endeavor, as well.”

Eddie frowns. “Scientific endeavor?”

“Yeah.” Richie grins. “Is kissing technique inherited through the mother’s side or not?”

He laughs and covers his face with his arms as he is hit simultaneously by four different pillows from four different directions.

The game continues. Richie nails Eddie for having broken a bone (which he had told him about at lunch one day), so Eddie gets him back for smoking cigarettes. (An exasperated Stan asks if they can go one single question without taking a break for Richie-and-Eddie debate time.) Stan has never made a big romantic gesture for someone, but Ben and Richie have; Mike has never had his heart broken, but Stan, Ben, and Richie have; Ben (after Richie begging him to go easy) says he has never, _uh, ridden on a motorcycle?_

When Mike reaches for the bottle, Richie groans. “Romantic gestures? Ridden on a _motorcycle_? Are you guys _kidding _me with this?” He slaps his knees decisively, looking around at them all. “Listen up, you prudes, this is how you play Never Have I Ever: never have I ever fucked a girl in the ass!”

Eddie nearly yelps. “Jesus Christ, Richie!”

“Have you?”

“No!”

“Who has? I bet someone here has!”

Mike freezes with the bottle to his lips, eyes flicking back and forth from Richie to Eddie. Then he takes another gulp.

“See?” says Richie, gesturing. “I told you! Nothing wrong with butt stuff, Eds, I just happen not to have done it with a lady.”

“Oh, but you’ve done it with a man?” Eddie shoots back.

Richie raises an eyebrow. “Guess you’ll have to play the game to find out,” he says. “It _is _your turn.”

Eddie scowls at him, drumming his fingers along the trunk of the bottle of white. “Fine, uhh—”

“_Never_…” Richie says slowly.

“Umm—”

“—_have I ever_—”

“Let’s see…”

“—_done butt stuff_—”

“Never have I ever had sex with more than one person,” says Eddie, red in the face, loud and rushed, over Richie low wheedling.

Ben tilts his head. “Like, at the same time?”

Eddie reddens further. “No! I meant, like, _ever_. In your life.”

“Oh,” says Ben. “Then, um…?” Politely, he reaches for the bottle from Mike, who is taking yet another swig.

“Pass it here when you’re done, Haystack,” Richie says, making grabby hands, as Stan plucks the bottle of white from Eddie and takes a sip himself. Eddie shrinks a little as the rest of them pass the bottles around.

When Stan pulls the bottle from his mouth, he smiles, shrewd and shark-like. “Never have I ever,” he says, “given a blowjob.” His expression is diabolical.

Rolling his eyes, Richie yanks the bottle from Ben’s hands and takes a swig. He glares at Stan over the rim.

“Wow,” says Ben, wide-eyed. “So you weren’t kidding when we played that game at Bev’s birthday.”

Richie splutters, nearly choking on the wine. He laughs along with the others and wipes his mouth. “Uh, _no_, Haystack,” he chuckles, feeling a heat on his neck and trying to cover it with bravado. “I was not kidding. It is indeed my signature.”

“So you’ve done it more than once,” Eddie says, and his voice is strange, his cadence stilted. When Richie glances up, Eddie is staring back, odd and unblinking.

Richie looks at the wall, his stomach roiling. Two cracks near the ceiling meet in a Y shape.

“Eeyup,” he confirms, voice steady, nonchalant. “Got rave reviews for that, too, if anyone’s curious.”

“We were not, but congratulations,” Stan drawls, looking around. “Anyone else?”

“Not me,” says Eddie.

Stan frowns at him. “Well, obviously.”

“Just the Trashmouth!” Richie croaks, fisting the neck of the bottle and raising it aloft. “Hey, that nickname really _does_ work, doesn’t it, Staniel?”

“Shut up, Richie,” Eddie says, face going red. “That’s gross.”

“Don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it, Eds!” Richie replies, toasting him. Then he jerks upwards, grinning broadly. “Hey, hey, how about this? Never have I ever _gotten _a blowjob.” He takes a sip, staring pointedly at Eddie. “Huh? What about that?”

Eddie sputters, face turning even redder. “That’s not— You can’t do that for something you _have _done, dipshit.”

“Sure I can!” Richie says stubbornly. “I took a sip for it, that’s fair. Who else wants it?” He holds the bottle out.

“No, no one take it, he’s breaking the rules,” Eddie says, leaning forward to stop anyone reaching for it. His jaw is set, petulant. “It’s against the rules, and it’s not even his turn, anyway! It’s Mike’s!”

“Just skip me next time we go around, c’mon,” says Richie, waving the near-empty bottle. “Who else? Who else has had their dick sucked! Who else has got a slob on their knob like a corn on the—”

“_Okay!_”

Stan yanks the bottle out of Richie’s hand and throws it back. He holds it out afterwards, glaring at Richie, and Mike takes it, too, and then Ben, who turns the bottle upside down afterwards, empty. The bottle of white remains, half-full, in Eddie’s lap.

“Yes,” Stan says emphatically. “Trashmouth really _does _work.”

***

The bus leaves close to three in the morning, and they’re some of the only people on it. Exhausted, Richie throws his backpack on the overhead rack and slides into a cushioned seat, bundled in his sweatshirt and jacket. The bus is heated but only just, and Richie slides one hand under his thigh to warm it up while he thumbs at his iPod with the other.

A second later, and Eddie slides into the seat beside him, his backpack cradled on his lap. “I’m fucking beat,” he gripes through a yawn. “I hope I sleep the whole way there.”

He lets his head fall back on the seat, lengthening the column of his neck. His eyes are drooping a little, nearly disappearing beneath his heavy eyebrows, the skin thin and darkening beneath them. Richie smiles and holds out an earbud. Eddie glances at it for only a moment before taking it and putting it in his ear.

“The usual?” Richie asks, hovering over MGMT.

“Mm,” says Eddie, closing his eyes.

“I really should make a playlist,” Richie murmurs, as the song begins to play.

“Mmm,” Eddie says again.

As the bus pulls out of the city and onto the long, loping highway, Richie leans his own head against the window, heavy-lidded eyes regarding the shadows of the bus. Stan, sitting ramrod straight with his arms crossed, eyes closed, as though he’s transformed into a statue. Mike, his back propped against his bag against the window, head nestled against the seat back, knees drawn up and socked feet on the seat. Ben, Richie cannot even see except for a boot protruding into the aisle, waving with every jerk of the bus; he’s sunk so far down in his row, seemingly curled up on his side. Besides them, only a handful of other people sit on the bus, peppering the expanse of empty rows.

Next to Richie, Eddie shifts. His arms are slowly coming uncrossed as his muscles relax in sleep, and his head is gradually drooping closer and closer to Richie’s shoulder. His mouth has dropped open slightly, his face unlined and peaceful.

Richie smiles softly and gently removes the headphone from Eddie’s ear so it won’t hurt when he bumps against Richie’s bony shoulder. Richie pulls his hood up and leans his head back against the bus window. By the time Eddie’s heavy head lands on his shoulder, Richie is already asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks as always to [@jajs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jajs) for the beta read. she’s amazing, y’all. 
> 
> i’m [@tempestbreak_](https://twitter.com/tempestbreak_) on twitter.
> 
> arabic glossary  
_allahu akbar_: lit., “God is greatest”; used as the call to prayer broadcast from mosques  
_bizzabt_: exactly  
_hurriya_: freedom  
_sabah al-kheir_: good morning  
_sabah an-noor_: good morning [typical response to _sabah al-kheir_]
> 
> since this one was a little heavy on tourism descriptions, i have lots of background information that wasn’t appropriate for the narrative but i still think is interesting. the minaret mike has his picture taken in front of is the minaret of jesus—something mike, with his interest in christian-muslim relations, finds fascinating. the plaque on saladin’s tomb really does say “vortuous.” ben and richie read saladin’s non-anglicized name (al-sultan salah al-din al-ayoubi) slightly differently; because richie is better at arabic than ben is, he automatically assimilates the L in “al-” to match the S and D, which belong to a specific group of letters in arabic that requires this. descriptions of the mausoleum’s architecture were drawn from [this website](http://islamicart.museumwnf.org/database_item.php?id=monument;isl;sy;mon01;14;en). 
> 
> the jewish quarter in damascus has been nearly empty of syrian jews for decades (in 2005, the u.s. state department estimated only [80 jews remained](https://2009-2017.state.gov/j/drl/rls/irf/2005/51610.htm) in the entire country), and by 2008 had fallen into disrepair. in november 2010 (nine months after the losers’ visit in february), the [jerusalem post reported](https://www.jpost.com/magazine/features/jewish-quarter-of-damascus-blooms-again) that it was just starting to be renovated and revitalized; however, the syrian civil war halted these efforts (as well as many others, of course).
> 
> a note on the keffiyeh: the issue of non-arabs wearing the keffiyeh is thorny. i want specifically to say that no one will be wearing the black-and-white keffiyeh that is associated with the palestinian struggle for statehood. (a lot has been written about how _that_ keffiyeh in particular has been appropriated as a fashion statement without awareness of the cultural meaning behind it, e.g., [here](https://english.alaraby.co.uk/english/comment/2018/2/13/so-you-want-to-wear-a-keffiyeh).) in my personal experiences at tourist sites in jordan (and syria in 2010, but especially jordan), buying and wearing a red-and-white jordanian keffiyeh _while at the site_ is encouraged. because of the way western imperialist powers drew jordan’s borders in the early twentieth century, jordan itself has almost no natural resources (and, most importantly for a middle eastern country, no oil). tourism is one of its major sources of income (appx. 10% of gdp according to unfpa); participating in tourism by visiting sites like petra and wadi rum, buying and wearing jordanian keffiyehs sold there, and taking pictures in them so that other tourists look at them and say, “oh hey, that looks like fun. we should go, too” (or, at the very least, “wow, the middle east doesn’t look as scary as it seems on the news”)—is helpful to the many thousands of jordanians making their living off tourism. of course, this is only my understanding as a westerner who spent time there and has a degree in middle east studies from a western institution; i’m sure my understanding is not super nuanced, and if anyone has a deeper understanding of it i’m eager to listen and incorporate into future chapters/notes. at the very least i can vouch that this imperfect understanding is common among westerners studying abroad, as the losers are in this fic.


	13. february vi: over the ramparts you tossed / the scent of your skin and some foreign flowers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from “pink bullets” by the shins

Palmyra at dawn is cold and dark. By the time they reach the ruins, having checked into their hostel and dropped off their bags, the sky is just beginning to break open, fissures of light splitting the white-gray clouds like the cracks in an eggshell.

The ruins of Palmyra have no official entrance, no ticket booth, no turnstiles. The modern city abuts them, as though the ruins are simply another long-deserted neighborhood. Nothing special. The five of them follow the hostel clerk’s directions and simply walk west along the road until suddenly they step into the past. One moment their shoes tread asphalt; the next, dirt.

The sprawling ruins are shadowy and surreal in the early light, empty but for them and a few other tired travelers. Dozens, maybe hundreds of columns line the sandy avenues they walk along. They have no agenda other than exploration and no guide other than the book that Stan has tucked in his jacket pocket.

The promenade leads them to the base of a huge stone archway, flanked by two smaller arches and capped with carved entablature, golden pink in the deepening light. Stan’s book names it the Triumphal Arch, constructed in the third century to integrate the north and south of the old city. They seem to collectively decide it’s as good a place as any to watch the sunrise.

Richie walks directly up to the side of the arch, near a half-crumbled column. He hooks his hands over the top of the stone shelf. It’s cold to the touch and utterly solid, as though the stone blocks of the arch have grown their own gravity from millennia of inertia. He kicks a foot up on one of the other nearby blocks, hoisting himself up until he can get a forearm and then his chest and belly and finally a knee up onto the ledge. He looks out at the breaking day from his new vantage point and feels an exhilarating peace.

He swallows and looks down at the others. Mike is already levering himself up onto the shorter ledge on the other side of the arch; Ben seems to be attempting to root out his own spot, as well, while Stan is examining his guidebook. Eddie, on the other hand, is at the base of Richie’s column, staring out at the ruins.

“Want a hand?” Richie asks.

Eddie startles and looks up. Richie gave him his hat again, because of the wind; it’s pulled low over his ears, the wisp of hair at his forehead ruffling. His eyes have that sanded-down look again, smooth like tumbled brown agate. They glint in the dim light.

Richie leans over the edge, arm extended. “There’s plenty of room for two. Well, for one and a half, pipsqueak.”

Eddie scowls at him. “You’re big enough to count for one and a half people by yourself.”

He grasps Richie’s hand in his. Richie knows his skin is cool but still it burns as Richie braces himself on the ledge and helps haul Eddie up, until Eddie can get his own hands and feet beneath him. Despite his nerves, he climbs much more gracefully than Richie, placing his feet thoughtfully, checking that his footholds are stable before putting his weight on them. Within moments, Eddie has his other palm firmly on the ledge and Richie is falling back as he pulls him over and nearly into his lap.

Richie’s breath stutters as his head and upper back hit the column behind him. Eddie is so close—_so _close. He caught himself with a hand by Richie’s side and is awkwardly straddling one of Richie’s thighs, mouth agape and eyes wide and staring down into Richie’s.

“Y-you’re a natural,” Richie says, smiling shakily.

Eddie stares. “What?”

“Climber,” Richie says.

Eddie swallows. “Oh.”

“Like a,” Richie says, licking his lips, “squirrel or something.”

Eddie blinks. Then he huffs out a laugh, and then he rolls away, carefully lifting his leg over Richie’s, avoiding his touch. Richie scrambles to sit up and scoots over, plastering himself to the wall to give Eddie room next to him.

Finally, they settle shoulder to shoulder, their backs against the wall of the arch and their faces to the dawn. They have to press along each other to fit, arms and hips and thighs, and Richie shoves his hands between his knees to keep them from reaching for Eddie’s.

They’re quiet for a long time. It’s strange for them, but Richie is vibrating at such a high frequency from the cold and Eddie’s closeness that there’s a kind of whirring in his skull anyway, and he’s afraid his teeth will start chattering if he unclenches his jaw. He attempts to focus instead on the way the sky is splitting open, spilling out rose and lavender and marigold.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Eddie shift and tilt his head. “Do you want your hat back?” Eddie asks quietly.

“Huh? Why?”

“You’re shivering.”

“Oh. No, I—”

As though it wants to betray him, his body gives a massive, wrenching shudder, from the tip of his head to the base of his spine.

“Whew!” Richie exclaims with a giggle, nearly involuntarily. He tries to give a nonchalant grin, but before he can protest Eddie is already pulling the hat off his head. Richie reaches for it, but Eddie just smiles and stuffs it onto his head, yanking it down low on Richie’s forehead.

“My pro-tip for hats? Coming from Maine,” he says wryly, adjusting it fussily. “Make sure it covers your ears. No one gives a shit how it looks when it’s negative twenty degrees with wind chill.”

Richie blinks at him from behind his glasses, knocked slightly askew. His face inches away, Eddie refuses to meet Richie’s eyes; his mouth is set, determined to properly arrange the hat on Richie’s head. With a final look, he seems to find it to his satisfaction. His dark eyes flick to Richie’s—Richie’s heart kicks against his ribs—but then they skitter away again. He seems to contemplate the stone.

“_Shukran_,” Richie croaks.

Eddie falls back against the wall with a thud. He draws his knees up to his chest and rests his forearms on them. The two of them are no longer pressed tight together.

“Don’t mention it,” he says.

***

By the time the sun emerges fully from the horizon, the ruins are coming to life. Tourists and even guides are beginning to mill about as Richie and Eddie sheepishly clamber down from their perch, but no one chastises them for climbing on the ruins. _They’ve lasted this long, _seems to be the feeling. _They’ll go on forever. _

They find a small visitor’s center, and everyone except Ben pools their cash to pay a truck to drive them to Palmyra Castle, a squat brown structure in the distance, perched atop a steep dusty peak.

The driver pulls the truck to the side and agrees to wait for them while they explore. At the foot of the castle, they come across a woman and her two young sons, selling turquoise-and-silver jewelry and, to Richie’s delight, checkered keffiyehs.

“Eds, now’s your chance for your study abroad profile pic,” says Richie, running a hand over a red one. “It was fate!”

Next to him, Eddie eyes it skeptically, but within moments one of the young boys has scooped up the scarf and is winding it around Eddie’s head, talking all the while in Syrian dialect so fast that Richie can’t understand a word.

“He says he’s showing you the right way to wear it,” says Stan, watching in amusement.

“I’m never gonna remember how to do this,” says Eddie, eyes wide as the boy tucks and twists the keffiyeh around him.

“That’s too bad, Eds, because you will be tested,” Richie laughs. Eddie only glares.

Eddie buys the keffiyeh. Of course he does: it’s wrapped tight around his head, and the kid is laughing at him for looking so uncomfortable in it, like he’s wearing a suit that’s too small, and Richie thinks Eddie buys it mostly to escape the interaction but by the time they’ve climbed up through the cold castle to the lonely ramparts, Eddie has unwound it from his temple and draped it loosely around his neck and shoulders, the red and white warm against the brown leather, and Richie has long thought of Eddie as _beautiful_ but never as _stylish_ until just now, with his jacket and keffiyeh and his hair growing longer and curling. Somehow Eddie seems to feel it, too. He shines.

The view from the top of the castle is spellbinding. The five of them approach the edge as if in a trance, taking in the endless expanse of countryside below. The ruins are clear brushstrokes of bright yellow and beige among the green and brown, all of it cast in a sheen of gold from the slanting, spilling sunlight.

“Wow,” Mike says breathlessly, leaning over the parapet.

“Yeah,” Richie agrees. For once, he’s speechless. He drapes an arm around Mike’s shoulders as they gaze out together. The ruins stretch out before them in the dawn light.

Stan sinks down onto the castle wall beside them, looking across the landscape. The rosy light illuminates and softens his striking face. Somewhere, a desert bird sings, clear and sweet. He looks utterly enchanted. “It’s perfect,” he breathes.

“It reminds me of that poem,” Ben says softly.

“I know exactly which one you mean, Haystack. _I once met a man from Nantucket_—”

“Shut up, Richie,” Eddie chides, but even he can’t get up his normal ire in the face of the vista laid out before them. Richie throws his other arm around Eddie’s shoulders affectionately and pulls him close. For once, Eddie doesn’t protest.

“Not that one, obviously,” Ben chuckles. “It’s about finding the ruin of an ancient statue buried in the sand. I think it’s by Shelley?”

“‘Ozymandias’,” Stan supplies.

“Gesundheit.” Richie grins.

“Please.” Eddie rolls his eyes. “At least say _sahha_.”

Richie barks out a laugh and rubs a hand into Eddie’s hair, which Eddie smacks away. “Eds gets off a good one!” he crows.

“As you were saying, Ben?” Mike says, jokingly holding a hand up in front of Richie’s face, as if to block him from participating in the conversation. Richie drops his arms and starts craning his head around, trying to dodge Mike’s hand.

Ben smiles. “Well, it’s not like I can recite it for you, so I’m afraid bringing it up isn’t really that interesting. All I remember is the last line. _The lone and level sands stretch far away_.”

That line rests among them for a moment. Somehow, even just those eight words fit; the emotion they evoke is familiar, like a pleasant, well-known smell, like bread baking or strong coffee. They breathe it in.

“When was that little ditty written, Haystack?”

“I dunno exactly. Early eighteen-hundreds?”

“Two hundred years old,” Mike murmurs.

“And these ruins are thousands,” Stan adds, in a whisper. Like they’re in church or, for Stan, synagogue, not in the open air in a castle on a lonely hill.

But Richie knows why. It’s the same feeling he has, just from being here: awe. Awe at what came before and of what no longer matters or even exists. Awe at what people were doing and feeling hundreds, thousands of years ago, and awe at how they’re still doing and feeling the same things. People are still people. What else can they do?

The thoughts remind him of the lyrics to that song Eddie always wants to listen to, so he turns with a grin to look for him.

“Hey, Eds—”

The words die on his lips. Eddie’s taken a few steps away from the group but is still gazing out over the landscape. The dawn light is illuminating his face with rosy pinks and purples, catching his brown eyes and lighting them with gold. A breeze ruffles his scarf and his hair, tousling it. He is achingly beautiful.

Richie is transfixed, his stomach tying in knots and his face growing warm in the cool dawn air. The ruins lie forgotten behind him. _Who cares_, he thinks fiercely. They’re used to being forgotten. Eddie is before him, full of breath and blood and life and just as awe-inducing. Richie wants to memorize this moment.

But he also knows a profile pic when he sees one. He raises his camera and snaps some photos of Eddie contemplating the landscape.

“_Yesss, _gorgeous_, work it_,” he calls, kneeling with his camera to his face. “The camera loves you, dahlink!”

Eddie starts, his face turning red. “Richie, what—”

“Keep looking out on the landscape, Eds! This is profile pic _magic_.” Richie starts walking in a semi-circle around him, as Eddie clams up and turns back toward the ruins, trying to act nonchalant and ignore Richie’s brand-new, totally-not-derivative-of-_Zoolander _Scandinavian Photographer Voice. “Yas! Vork it! You’re beautiful! You’re gorgeous! You’re on a study abroad trip in _Syria_, _ma sha al-LAH_, how cosmopolitan! And that keffiyeh—I can tell you’re thinking about the two-state solution, dahlink!”

At that, Eddie starts cracking up, bringing a hand up to half-cover his mouth. “All right, Richie, don’t you think we have enough?”

“There can never be enough pictures of you in this light, Eds!” Richie says, his finger snapping the button even more heatedly. _Laughing Eddie! In Syria! At dawn! Click click click! _“Seriously, you look great.”

Eddie looks down (_bashful Eddie in Syria at dawn! Click click click!_) and mutters, “I’m getting a little self-conscious, though.”

“Hm.” Richie gets up from where he was kneeling on the stone of the castle roof and thinks for a second. “Hey, Haystack! You got that fancy-ass camera, get over here!”

The other three have wandered slowly away from the overlook, taking their own pictures, but Ben lifts his head when Richie calls to him and trots over.

“You know what you’re doing with that contraption, Haystack, I’ve seen you,” Richie says. “Eds and I are working on his profile pic, but _the talent_—” he cups a hand around his mouth and jerks his other thumb back at Eddie “—is getting a little camera shy. Mind taking our picture together?”

“Sure, no problem!” Ben says agreeably.

Richie grins and claps him on the shoulder. “_Shukran, habibi!” _he says warmly, sliding his digital camera into his jacket pocket and walking over to Eddie, who’s sitting on the parapet. “Ben’s gonna take our picture together with his fancy camera. You’ll look even more amazing with that lens, and no one could feel self-conscious next to this ugly mug,” he says, indicating his own face. “It’s a win-win.”

Eddie looks a little unsure but before he can protest, Richie sits down, throws an arm around him, and starts cheesin’ for the camera. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Eddie smile, and then Richie feels Eddie snake an arm around his back, too. Ben obligingly snaps a few shots before directing them to a better spot, where the ruins are still in the shot without the dawn light at their backs.

“I knew you were the right person to ask, Haystack! Make sure you get our model’s good side—or at least try not to somehow find a bad side, if one even exists.”

“You don’t have to keep doing this, Richie,” Eddie says quietly. “I think this is more than enough pictures.”

Richie turns to him, and their faces are close. He can see every freckle across Eddie’s nose, the mixture of coffee brown and gold in his eyes as he blinks uncertainly back at Richie.

“Eddie, I know I don’t _have_ to do this,” Richie says gently, “but you said you wanted some good pictures of you in Syria, and when you see these— Well, actually, I’ll just show you. Hold up, Haystack.” He holds out a hand to Ben, putting his fingertips together in the Arab gesture for _wait_, and whips out his own camera from his jacket pocket. Together, he and Eddie bend over the small screen.

The first picture that comes up is the last one that Richie took, of Eddie bashfully looking down. “See? You look great. Totes adorbs.” Richie starts clicking back through them one by one. “Adorbs. Adorbs. Adorbs. Hey, guess what? This one’s adorbs, too. Adorbs, adorbs, adorbs…” He pauses. “Wow, that word is starting to lose all meaning to me.”

“Probably because it’s not a word, dumbass,” Eddie mumbles, but when Richie glances at him, he can see Eddie’s face is pink.

Then he lands on one of the pictures he took before Eddie realized he was playing photographer, and Richie can’t contain himself. He clasps a hand to the back of his head and whistles. “Fuck, Eds, there she _is_, though! There’s your new profile pic! Sorry, Haystack, we never needed you in the first place, I got it in fucking _one_.”

Eddie’s almost exactly as Richie saw him with his own eyes, gazing contemplatively out on the ruins. It has everything: the keffiyeh flapping in the breeze, the dawn lighting Eddie’s brown eyes. The ruins aren’t in the shot because it’s mostly of Eddie, but part of the castle is in the background and even a rippling Syrian flag that Richie hadn’t noticed before.

“That _is_ a good picture of me,” Eddie says in surprise.

“Are you kidding me, Eddie Spaghetti? It’s _great_! Send this one straight to Myra. Hell, send it to _Playgirl_, this is some primo spank bank material right here. Ben, c’mere, you gotta check out this pic, man.”

Ben comes up by Richie’s shoulder to look at the camera screen. “I gotta admit, Eddie, that’s a great picture,” Ben says, smiling. “I mean, I’m not going to add it to my _personal _spank bank collection...”

“Speak for yourself, Haystack! I think I’m actually gonna need some time alone with this one tonight. Think you guys could get lost for like an hour?”

“Shut up, Richie!” Eddie’s face is still pink from the attention. “And it would be more like five minutes, anyway.”

“You’re right, Eds, I couldn’t last long looking at this face. You look just like your mom.”

_“Shut up, Richie.”_

“Hey, idiots,” Stan calls over to them from one of the battlements, his tone annoyed, “would you mind releasing Ben and his good camera to take _our_ picture?”

“Please?” Mike adds, laughing. “Stan is apparently ideologically opposed to taking a selfie.”

Richie stands up with a smile. “I’ll do you one better, Stanley the Manley,” he shouts back. “I’ll see your picture of you and Mikey and raise you a group picture of the rest of you, taken by yours truly. Go on, losers, squad up.” He puts a hand on Eddie’s shoulders and nudges him toward the others.

“That is not better at all,” Stan says, but he reluctantly holds out his arm for Eddie. Ben carefully hands Richie his camera before jogging over to Eddie’s other side.

Richie holds the camera up to his face. “All right, everyone, say— Wait, what’s ‘cheese’ in Arabic?”

“_Jabna_,” says Stan.

“Well, that’s doesn’t have the ‘ee’ sound. What’s the Arab equivalent of saying ‘cheese’ for the camera?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, then I guess you’re not as good at Arabic as I thought you were, Stanley.”

“What about _haleeb_?” Mike suggests. “Milk? It’s basically cheese.”

“Ooh, that’s good,” Ben says. “I like that.”

“How about everyone just smiles without saying anything and Richie takes the fucking picture already?” Stan says.

“How about _fashileen_?” Eddie says.

“Genius! Eds, you found it! On the count of three, everyone say _fashileen_! One, two, three…”

“_Fashileen!_”

***

They come down from the castle soon afterwards. After Richie got a good group picture of the rest of them, he squeezed his way on the end and forced them to take a selfie, despite Stan’s protests. When they all crowded around the camera to peer at themselves, tired and bright, Stan begrudgingly admitted sometimes selfies could be all right.

The truck takes them back down the hill. They explore the ruins until they all admit they’re exhausted and starving. They find a café in the middle of modern Palmyra to eat at, and Mike feeds pieces of kefteh to the stray cat that whines at his chair.

While they tear into their lunch, Richie notices that Stan, seated across from him, keeps glancing furtively over Richie’s shoulder.

Richie raises an eyebrow. “What’s up, Staniel?” he asks. “You see an ex?”

“Some guys are staring at us,” Stan mutters. He jerks as Richie twists in his seat, hissing, “No, wait—!”

But it’s too late. Richie makes eye contact with a table of three surly-looking Syrian guys who are clearly giving them the stink-eye. He tries to give a friendly grin that he’s afraid comes out as more of a grimace before he whips back around.

“Aaand now one of them is coming over,” groans Stan. “Great job, Trashmouth.”

“I didn’t even say anything! I just looked!”

“Who? Who’s coming over?” Eddie asks, frantic.

Then one of the men is standing at the end of their table. “Hello,” he says in gruff English.

“Hello,” Stan says, through gritted teeth.

Richie plasters on a bright face, his heart pounding. “_Ahlan! Kiifak?_”

Surprise flickers across the man’s face before it returns to its stoic skepticism. “You speak Arabic,” he observes.

“_Aywa, shway_,” Richie says, all fake modesty. He can’t see anyone but Stan, whose entire body language screams _ALERT! DANGER!_, but he can sense the others are similarly frozen. He hopes Eddie’s all right.

The man glances over all of them. “Where are you from?”

“_Amreeka_,” says Richie, at the same time as Stan blurts out, “Canada.”

Richie forces his smile even wider. “**_He’s from Canada_**,” he lies smoothly. “**_I’m from California. _**Los Angeles?” Because cab drivers in Jordan seem to know it. Usually it ends with Richie telling the story of how he saw Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson at a Mexican restaurant once. _Wonder if this guy smells what the Rock’s cookin’_, his brain suggests unhelpfully.

“Ah, so you are American,” says the guy. “What you think of Bush?”

“**_A failure of a president_**,” Richie says immediately. Truthfully. “**_Terrible. We hated him._**”

“**_You did not vote for him?_**” the guy asks, finally switching into Arabic rather than insisting on English. Richie counts this a win, in the social trust category.

They all shake their heads—again, truthfully. Richie was fifteen in 2004.

“**_We do not support the War in Iraq_**,” Mike says, his voice earnest.

This, more than anything, seems to surprise him. “**_Aren’t you military?_**” he asks, frowning.

They shake their heads again. “**_We’re students_**,” says Stan. “**_We’re studying Arabic in Jordan, here for the holiday_**.”

“**_Ohh, you are students_**,” the man says, as though all the pieces of the puzzle have fallen into place. A relieved smile breaks out over his tense face, and Richie relaxes muscles he didn’t even know he was clenching. “**_How do you like Syria?_**”

After that, conversation flows much more nicely. The man, Walid, is gratified by their gushing words about Palmyra and Damascus (especially when Richie tells him Damascus is way, way prettier than Amman). He says he assumed they were military because of their age and is surprised when they tell him in turn that military service isn’t compulsory in the United States. He politely declines when Richie offers him some tea and bread, and when he parts to go back to his table, they overhear him telling his companions, _They are students, not military_. Their tables exchange friendly waves.

“Whew,” says Richie, turning back to everyone, eyes wide.

“My heart was pounding,” Ben admits, laughing. “But he ended up being nice.”

“What was up with Canada, Stan?” Mike asks.

Stan takes a deep breath and lets it out. “It was something some kids last semester did when they traveled,” he says. “Hard to be an American in Syria. Even harder to be a Jew.”

“Ah,” says Ben.

“Makes sense,” says Eddie.

“I’m just grateful he didn’t bring up Israel, honestly,” says Stan, picking at the bread in front of him. “Too many awkward conversations. I never feel like I’m explaining my feelings about it well enough.”

“Whatever you need to do, Stan the Man,” says Richie. “We’re behind ya.”

Stan gives him a wan smile.

“I’m glad you told him the truth for the rest of us, though, Richie,” says Mike. “Now he’ll be able to say he met some nice Americans who weren’t here to, like, set up a puppet regime or something.”

“Exactly,” says Richie, reaching down as the ginger cat Mike was feeding winds around his legs, “we’re just here to keep their stray cat population fed. Right, Mikey?”

***

They consider visiting the amphitheater and the art museum, but after paying for their lunch, they realize the entrance fees are a bit too hefty on their dwindling Syrian cash funds. They opt to return to the hostel instead, hoping their large lunch will tide them over.

Their room in this hostel is not nearly as big as the last. It’s small, clearly improvised and not exactly large enough for five people: two wide twin beds are shoved together in the center, piled with thick blue and brown blankets. In an alcove in the corner is another, narrower bed, little more than a cot, which Stan quickly claims with his backpack. There’s an adjoining bathroom, where Eddie soon holes himself up to shower off the bus and the sand. Meanwhile, Richie, Ben, and Mike throw themselves on the bed and burrow under the covers to take refuge from the chill, which permeates the building. Ben locates the remote and channel surfs until he finds one showing _Erin Brockovich _with Arabic subtitles, and they laze around, talking over it, until Eddie leaves the bathroom wearing a sweater and his flannel pajama pants, his wet hair plastered to his forehead.

“Wow, is it bedtime already, Eds?” Richie asks. “All of four PM?”

Eddie takes in the three of them on the bed—Richie and Mike on either side of a snoozing Ben, all of them not exactly cuddling but enjoying the shared warmth of their bodies under the blankets. He glances at Stanley, reading his guidebook in the corner, and then back to the others.

“You guys are the ones in the bed,” he finally says. He bends down to put his folded clothes in his backpack.

“I think Ben has the right idea, honestly,” Mike says quietly, nodding in Ben’s direction. “A nap after the overnight trip we had.”

“If I fall asleep now,” Richie yawns, “I’ll be up all night again.”

Eddie straightens and regards the three of them again. He’s chewing his lip. “Can we really all fit?”

“The three of us fit fine,” Mike says encouragingly.

“Yeah, and you’re the littlest,” Richie adds. “You can curl up at the foot of the bed like a dog.”

Eddie rolls his eyes. “Isn’t that what we decided _you_ are, Trashmouth?”

Richie tuts while Mike and Stan, in the alcove, chuckle. “I was really hoping we’d left that one at the last place. What happens in Damascus stays in Damascus.”

“Pretty sure that’s not the saying,” sniffs Eddie, and in one swift motion, he sits down on the bed beside Richie and whips the blanket up and over his own legs.

Richie’s skin is suddenly tingling, his heart racing. Ben stirs and blinks beside him, so he turns and exclaims, “_Sabah al-kheir, yaa _Haystack! Sleep well?”

“Huh?” says Ben.

“I think there’s something shady about this gas company,” says Richie, gesturing wildly at the TV.

“I’ve seen it before,” Ben mumbles, and rolls over to crush his face in the pillow.

Richie tucks his arm back under the covers and wriggles down so only his head is peeking out. He doesn’t look but he knows Eddie is sitting upright, back straight against the headboard and arms crossed over his chest. Richie stares unblinking at the TV and studiously does not touch Eddie.

“What the fuck is chronium?” he asks after a minute, purposely brash.

“_Chromium_,” Eddie and Stan both say.

“It’s a carcinogen,” says Eddie. “It’s in drinking water.”

“In the movie,” Stan corrects him. “It’s in drinking water in the movie.”

“No.” The bed creaks, and Richie doesn’t have to look up to know Eddie’s shaking his head. “No, it is in drinking water. It’s been found in all fifty states and there are no federal regulations dictating appropriate levels and millions of people are served by contaminated utilities and it can cause cancer and— and harm to the liver…”

Now Richie cranes his neck to get a look at Eddie. His teeth are clenched, a muscle in his jaw popping.

Richie pulls a hand out from under the covers and scoops up the remote from Ben’s lap. “Sounds like a bummer,” he says loudly. “I’m changing it.”

He settles on a Syrian soap opera. There are no subtitles, so Richie assigns everyone characters as they appear on screen and makes up a backstory for everyone.

“That’s you, Eds,” he says, when a bearded man appears, peering surreptitiously through the window at Mike’s young woman character.

“Oh, I’m the peeping Tom? Cool, thanks.”

“You’re not a peeping Tom,” says Richie. “You’re scoping out potential victims for your black-market organ harvesting business.”

Eddie laughs. “Oh, so I’m an even worse criminal.”

“You’re an entrepreneur.”

Eddie laughs again, and he slides farther down the bed, hands bunching in the covers. They watch as the man walks away from the window and gets into a waiting limousine, with tinted windows. “Guess selling organs on the black market does pretty well for me,” says Eddie, snorting. “Clearly I’m not worried about calling attention to myself.”

“I’m your limo driver,” Richie tells him, as Eddie’s man speaks to the driver with a salt-and-pepper mustache.

“No way, you’d crash.”

“I’m a good driver!”

“I’d be a limo driver way before you would.”

“Fine, then, Stan can be your driver,” says Richie. “Whaddaya think, Stanley?”

But when they peer into the alcove, they see Stan has fallen asleep with his guidebook open on his chest.

Richie and Eddie watch the rest of the soap opera together, until everyone else has dozed off and they’re filling all of the roles by themselves. At some point, Ben wakes up, and the three of them chat quietly and munch on leftover Pringles and sip on a big bottle of water that Eddie buys from the fridge behind the counter downstairs. Stan and Mike stir, too, but no one seems inclined to go out to search for food; they’re all exhausted and sated and nearly broke, anyway. Instead they mill about finishing the Pringles and some other snacks Mike picked up, showering and brushing their teeth and changing into pajamas, listening to the music playing out of the tinny speaker of Richie’s iPod.

Then, as though a stage manager called, “Places,” they all resume their prior spots in their respective beds, Mike and Eddie bookending Ben and Richie; Stan an island. As he draws up the covers, Richie tries not to think about how Eddie’s body is curling next to his, how he can practically feel Eddie’s heat and breath and heartbeat. He rolls away from him as Stan turns out the light.

***

Sometime in the night, Richie becomes dimly aware of the feeling of a body pressed against his front. The person is soft and warm and smells clean and somehow verdant, like spring; he feels nice. Instinctively, Richie snakes an arm over his side and pulls his back flush against his chest, nuzzling into the back of his neck. He sighs and begins to drift back to sleep.

“Richie?”

Richie hums in response, still mostly asleep. The cradle of his hips is pressed comfortingly up against the curve of an ass. His dick is lazily, luxuriously hardening against Eddie.

“Richie, are you—?”

_Eddie_.

The thought finally breaks through the haze of sleep. Richie jerks back as if burned, his eyes blinking open suddenly. It’s dark in the room; everyone else, except Eddie, is still sleeping. Other than his heart pounding in his chest, all Richie can hear is the sound of Ben softly snoring.

“S-sorry, Eds,” he stammers in a whisper. “I was asleep.”

He feels more than sees Eddie rolling over to face him. He wants to close his eyes and pretend to have somehow, improbably, fallen back to sleep already, but he’s frozen. Dimly, he can make out the outline of Eddie’s mussed hair on the pillow but can’t see much more than that. Crucially, he cannot decipher the shadows of Eddie’s expression.

“You woke me up,” Eddie mutters. Richie thinks he detects the typical note of annoyance in his voice.

“Sorry,” he says again, rushed. He prays Eddie only felt his arm around him and not his slowly filling cock against his ass.

“It’s okay. You were warm.”

Eddie actually sounds sleepy, now, lazy, like maybe his eyes aren’t even open. Richie relaxes a little.

“Yeah, it’s kinda chilly in here,” he whispers. “I think that’s why I was all up on you.”

“Mm,” Eddie hums in agreement. Richie feels him nod against the pillow.

With a smile, Richie closes his own eyes. His heartrate is slowing back down, sleep overtaking him again. “Mmkay. Night, Eds.”

“Mm. Richie?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you hard?”

Richie’s breath hitches, his heart leaping in his chest. He opens his eyes again and this time, somehow, he can tell that Eddie is awake and his brown eyes are staring into Richie’s. He opens his mouth to deny it, to make a joke, to say fucking _anything, ANYTHING would be better than SILENCE, SILENCE IS TOO OBVIOUS, RICHIE, so just say SOMETHING_—but no words are coming to him.

The next second, however, even the very concept of speech flees Richie’s mind because Eddie shifts under the blankets and his hand brushes Richie’s hard cock through his boxers.

Richie gasps involuntarily at the feeling and has just barely the presence of mind to think, _I’m hard? How am I so hard?_ before Eddie’s palm presses against him more firmly.

“You _are_,” Eddie breathes. Richie whimpers at the sound, his dick twitching in Eddie’s hot hand. “I knew it.”

“Eds, what are you—?”

Eddie moves quickly to press his other hand over Richie’s mouth. Their faces are so close that Richie can see how dark Eddie’s eyes are, see the wry smile spreading across his face as he slowly runs his hand up and down Richie’s cock.

“Shh,” Eddie says, smiling, “you don’t want to wake the others, do you? Don’t want them to know how hard you got just from sleeping next to me, right, Rich?”

Richie wants to say he’s sure Eddie dirty talking to him is more likely to wake them, because Eddie’s voice feels desperately loud to him right now, this close, but that would require putting together a coherent thought, and that is impossible when Eddie squeezes his hand just beneath the flared head. Instead Richie lets out a soft, muffled noise of acquiescence against Eddie’s hand.

“That’s better,” Eddie murmurs. He slowly drags his hand up Richie’s cock from the base to the tip and then beyond, sliding his hand up to Richie’s abdomen and then, incredibly, slipping his hand down under the band of his boxers and inside to grip it, skin to skin. Richie is burning_, pulsing_ at his touch. He whimpers into Eddie’s palm.

“Look at you,” Eddie whispers, gripping his hand around the dripping head of Richie’s cock, slicking his fingers with precome. “You’re so fucking wet for me, Richie. Are you always like this or is it just because it’s me? Is that it? Your cock is fucking drooling because I’m the one touching you?”

Richie closes his eyes and nods, unable to look at Eddie when he admits that he’s so hard, so wet, _so close_ just because it’s Eddie, Eddie with his hand on his cock in the middle of the night, Eddie using his other hand to muffle Richie’s needy whines, Eddie watching him come undone before him, Eddie who’s going to make him— who’s making him—

Richie can’t help it; even behind Eddie’s hand, he _moans_—

His eyes snap open, his hips mid-thrust. He freezes, strangling a sound that came from deep in his throat. His face is buried in the pillow, barely an inch from the back of Eddie’s neck. The room is dark and still; everyone else, including Eddie, is still asleep.

_A dream, _he thinks breathlessly, his head still spinning. _It was just a dream._

And then: _Fuuuck._

His cock is fucking _throbbing_, like iron pulled from the fire. It’s straining against his boxers, which are damp from sweat and precome; he’s sure that one twitch would bump his swollen, leaking head up against the small of Eddie’s back or maybe even his ass and—

_Fuck, don’t think about Eddie’s ass. Jesus Christ_.

Richie screws his eyes up tight, clenching his fists to stop from touching himself. Seriously, he is on a hair trigger right now; even the barest touch could send him over the edge. Breathing hard, he wills himself to settle down, to take even one aching step back from this precipice.

Slowly, after what feels like an hour but must be only minutes, he feels calm enough to move. Inch by inch, he rolls onto his back, away from the warmth of Eddie’s body. He can hardly believe how turned on he is right now. If he had tried to move right away, even the light friction of the sheets sliding over the front of his boxers could have set him off. He breathes a sigh of relief when he’s finally facing the ceiling and rubs a hand across his sweaty face, trying to get a hold of himself.

After several deep breaths, Richie reassesses the situation. To his right, Eddie remains breathing deeply, his back to Richie; on his other side, Ben is softly snoring. It’s almost pitch-black in the room.

And Richie needs to fucking come.

Slowly, painstakingly, he shimmies up and out of the covers, gradually extricating himself at the head of the bed. Once free, he crawls down the bed and tiptoes off to the bathroom.

As soon as he’s in the bathroom, he locks the door and quickly peels down his damp boxers, not even bothering to turn on the light; the streetlight filtering grittily through the small window is enough for this. His cock bobs free, and he grips it hard. He leans over the toilet, one hand on the wall and the other stroking hard and fast. It’s easy; he’s just as slick as he was in his dream, when it was Eddie’s smaller hand on him, when it was Eddie forcing Richie to confess how much it affected him to have Eddie touching him.

Just remembering dream-Eddie’s hand on him has him coming in seconds. His hips jerk and his knees buckle as he spills into the toilet, gasping.

Slowly, his breathing and heartrate return to normal.

And then the guilt arrives.

Shakily, he stands up straight, registering now the chill of the stone on his sweaty, bare feet.

“Great job, brain and dick, you guys worked together on this one,” he mutters. He flushes the toilet and staggers to the sink to run cold water over his hands. “You almost made me rub off on Eddie while he’s not even awake. That’s a super cool thing to do.”

He splashes water in his face, hoping against hope it will wash away the memory of dream-Eddie pressing a hand to Richie’s mouth to keep him from moaning. The water is freezing and feels awful, but the image of Eddie’s blown pupils staring into Richie’s remains emblazoned behind his eyes.

God _damn _it. It was bad enough to be so attracted to Eddie during his waking hours. Now his brain had to go and conjure up the fucking hottest, realest-feeling fantasy and serve it up to him at literally the worst possible time. Richie sighs, scrubbing a hand over his face. It’s going to take weeks for him to stop wondering if the real Eddie would say such filthy things to him in bed.

Soon, Richie re-enters the dark bedroom. He squints at the bed in the dim light. The Eddie-lump seems to have migrated closer to the Ben-lump, into the warmth of Richie’s vacated spot. Richie sighs and pads around to the side of the bed and slips in to take Eddie’s old place on the end instead. He tugs gently on the sliver of blanket left behind to try to cover his cold legs, pale strips in the moonlight, and settles down onto the mattress.

He lets his head _whump_ onto the pillow, and it… it smells like Eddie. Like the shampoo that Eddie brought from home, clean and fresh, like spring. Like how Eddie smelled in his dream, when Richie pressed himself along his warm body. Richie’s stomach twists under his skin. He rolls over to face the wall, drawing the blankets with him.

But Richie’s movement and the tugging on the covers seems to rouse Eddie. Richie freezes; behind him, he can feel Eddie turning with the sheets. He squeezes his eyes shut, trying to even his breathing as his heart kicks wildly in his chest. He prays Eddie isn’t awake. Prays he won’t ask Richie why he got out of bed.

Finally, Eddie seems to settle. In a moment, Richie feels hot breath on the back of his neck, and the ghosting touch of sleeping fingertips twitching against his shoulder blades. He tries to inch away but he’s already at the edge of the bed. He sighs. He’ll just have to stay like this, inches from the guy whose mere proximity inspired his first (almost-)wet dream since he was in high school. He takes another deep breath and lets it out, and, smelling Eddie’s scent and feeling Eddie’s warmth, prays for sleep.

***

Richie does sleep, but fitfully. Every time he wakes up, he finds himself facing Eddie—who is _always_ facing him, sleeping like a goddamn rock, completely steady and peaceful despite Richie’s tossing and turning—and he has to turn back around towards the wall, just for his own sanity. Yet time and again, he wakes up with Eddie’s warm sweet-sour breath on his pillow. The fact that he doesn’t mind it at all makes him honestly consider sleeping in the cot with Stan.

Mike is the first to stir. It’s early yet, too early for them to be awake, really, but their sleep schedules have been completely thrown off, what with the overnight bus trip and yesterday’s naps and then Bonergate, as Richie is already calling it in his mind, because making fun of it is the only way he can stop himself from screaming.

When he feels Mike moving, Richie lifts an arm to make his presence. After a second he sees Mike give a lazy wave back from the other side of the bed.

They dilly-dally for a few moments, courting some extra sleep, before both of them seem to give it up. Mike whispers, “Breakfast?” and Richie gives a thumbs up, and they extricate themselves from the bed, attempting not to wake the others.

Breakfast is in a small dining area off the lobby. Richie and Mike choose a table near the window. It’s another gray day, a contrast from the open sun of the day before. A good day to go home.

They linger at the table, chatting amiably over bread and coffee, until it’s nearly time for them to catch the bus back to Damascus that Stan has planned for them to take. From there back to the border crossing, and from there to Amman. They should be home for dinner.

Eventually, Mike pushes his chair back and says, “Maybe I’ll get the checkout process started? Ben’s paying, right?”

“He’d better,” Richie quips, “he didn’t even—” He stops, mouth going dry, because he wants to joke, _He didn’t even give me a handy under the covers last night_, but—

Mike raises an eyebrow. “He didn’t even…?”

“Oh, blah blah blah, joke about paying for sex, you know your Trashmouth,” Richie finishes with a shrug. He stands from the table and chugs his coffee. “C’mon, Mikey, _yalla_, let’s blow this popsicle stand.”

They approach the woman at the front desk, who greets them with a smile and a _sabah al-kheir. _Richie gives a gracious gesture to Mike as if to say _all yours_, so Mike fumbles a bit for the words but tells her that they plan to check out soon and they’re going to go get their friend who will pay with his card.

And then the woman tilts her head apologetically and says something that sounds very much like _I’m sorry, we don’t take credit cards_.

Richie’s heart drops through the floor. In what feels like slow motion, he and Mike turn to each other in horror. “Did she just say they don’t take card?”

Mike swallows hard. “That’s what I heard.”

“Get Stan,” Richie says, without thinking, and Mike is off like a shot up the stairs.

Within moments, Mike is back with Stan in tow. Stan’s face is tight from sleep, but his eyes are sharp. He walks right up to the desk and engages the woman in a tense conversation, in _‘ammiya_ so fast that Richie can barely follow it. The receptionist is looking a little edgy herself, probably realizing that the five American kids who owe the hotel for a big room may not be able to pay up. She keeps shaking her head. It doesn’t look good.

Richie scrubs a hand down his face and starts pacing. _Fuck. FuckfuckfuckfuckFUCK_. He makes nearly a full circuit around the empty breakfast room, keeping one eye on Stan’s terse conversation as he curses himself for being so goddamn cavalier about everything _like always_ and this is where it got him, _stranded _in_ Syria_, with the equivalent of ten bucks in his bag and _that’s it_ _Richie that’s what you GET_—

“Richie? Hey, man, you all right?” Mike is suddenly in front of him, his gentle face concerned. He puts his hands on Richie’s shoulders and stares into his eyes. “Don’t worry, Rich, it’s gonna be okay. We’re all in this together.”

Richie takes several shuddering breaths, but the feeling of Mike squeezing his shoulders is grounding him. After a moment, he closes his eyes and nods. “Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Thanks, Mikey, I needed that.”

A sigh alerts them that Stan is approaching, and Mike takes his hands off Richie’s shoulders. Stan’s face is taut. It says everything.

“No card,” Richie says. It’s not a question.

Stan shakes his head grimly. “They don’t take card, and there’s no ATM in Palmyra,” he says, looking back and forth between them. “The closest ATM is in Damascus.”

Richie and Mike glance at each other and then back at Stan. “Well, let’s round up the Losers,” Richie finally says, setting his jaw. “We need a fucking game plan.”

***

The three of them hightail it back to the room in silence. A million scenarios are running through Richie’s mind simultaneously—how long it’ll take them to get to Damascus, how much it’ll cost them, how completely fucked they’ll be if they can’t find an ATM.

Richie, Mike, and Stan burst through the door to their room. Eddie and Ben have packed up and are sitting on the bed, looking at the pictures Ben took on his camera. They seem relaxed, totally unaware. Eddie looks up with a smile when they come back in, but his face falls when he catches sight of their expressions. Richie has to look away.

“The hotel doesn’t take card,” Stan announces, his voice tight.

Eddie frowns. Ben blinks.

“And the closest ATM is in Damascus.”

Ben and Eddie process the information before their eyes. Ben’s eyes flit from Stan to Richie to Mike, as though he’s trying to figure out how serious the situation is, the slight smile sliding from his face as he finds no indication that it’s a joke. Eddie gulps and looks down, his hand twisting in his shirt collar.

“Seriously?” Ben says.

The three of them nod, somewhat gravely.

“How much do we owe? Is there any chance we could scrape together enough to pay them?”

Mike shakes his head. “Not with enough cash leftover to get back to Damascus.”

Ben furrows his eyebrows, clearly thinking hard. “Okay. So let me get this straight,” he says. “We’re currently stranded in the middle of nowhere, _in_ _Syria_, barely enough cash between the five of us to get back home to Amman, the hostel doesn’t accept credit card as payment, and the closest ATM is a three-hour bus ride away in Damascus.”

“For those of you just tuning in,” Richie says wryly. “Yes.”

“So we all have to get the bus to Damascus, find an ATM, and then come back here to pay the hotel?”

“Close, Haystack, but no _sijara_,” Richie says. He leans back against the wall and crosses his arms. “_Some _of us have to get the bus to Damascus and come back with the cash. The others have to wait here. As collateral.”

For a moment, silence. Then:

_“What?” _Eddie says, leaping to his feet. Mike and Ben look similarly horrified, but Stan nods.

“You guys all know how much this pains me to say,” Stan agrees drily, “but Richie is right. Someone has to stay behind.”

“We shouldn’t separate,” Eddie protests. “Our phones don’t even _work_ here. What if something happens to the people in Damascus? The ones in Palmyra would have no way of knowing!”

“How else are we going to prove to the hotel that we’re coming back with the money?” Stan asks. “What’s to stop us from just cutting and running, if we don’t leave someone behind?”

Eddie opens his mouth but seems to realize he has no response. He closes it again, tight, and sits back down on the bed, resting his elbows on his knees and putting his face in his hands. Richie wants so badly to sit next to him, like he did outside the visa office in Amman. Instead, he thinks of the previous night, and shoves his hands in his jeans pockets.

Everyone is quiet.

Stan shifts and lifts his phone to his face. “The next bus for Damascus leaves in half an hour,” he says, “so we’d better get our plan nailed down. Who’s going to stay and who’s going to go?”

“_Darling you’ve got to let me know,”_ Richie sings softly. Mike snorts.

Ben sighs, slaps his hands on his thighs, and stands. “Well, I’m going,” he says resolutely. “I was supposed to pay for this hostel, so I have to get the money.”

Richie grins and fans himself. “Haystack volunteers as tribute. My hero!”

“The only thing is, my Arabic isn’t as good as you guys’,” Ben continues. “Someone with good _‘ammiya_ has to come with me.”

“Stan’s Arabic is by far the best,” Mike says. “It makes sense for him to go with you.” Stan turns a little pink at Mike’s words but nods curtly. Richie thinks, strangely, that he looks like he’s enlisting in the army. He thinks of Walid in the café yesterday.

“So, Stan and Ben go to Damascus?” Richie asks. “Me, Mike, and Eddie stay here?”

Eddie’s voice is so quiet that at first they don’t hear him. “Someone has to tell Huda,” he croaks, “in case we can’t get back in time for class tomorrow.”

“Shit, _Huda_,” Mike breathes.

Ben runs a hand through his sandy hair. “She’s gonna be so worried.”

“Our phones are useless, and there’s no internet in the hostel,” Richie mutters. “So… three people go to Damascus? Two come back, one goes on to Jordan and calls Huda as soon as he gets reception?”

“That’ll be me, I think,” Stan says. His face is grim, and although he’s trying to keep his voice light, it wavers a little.

“Stan, no,” says Richie, taking a step towards him, but Mike is already there, with a comforting hand on his upper back.

“You don’t have to,” says Mike softly, leaning close. “I could do it, I think.”

“Or me,” says Richie.

But Stan shakes his head, his mouth set. “No. Like you guys said, my Arabic’s the best. Whoever goes back to Jordan will have to get from Damascus to the border alone.”

“Well, then I’ll be the third person in your party. Roommate solidarity, right?” Mike says, leaning his head down to make eye contact with Stan, who gives a tight but slightly relieved smile. “My Arabic’s good enough to get me and Ben from Damascus back here, anyway. Richie, Eddie, are you guys all right staying behind?”

Richie puts a hand to his brow in a salute. “At your service, Captain Mikey. You all right sticking with me here in the trenches, Private Spaghetti?” He knocks the toe of his shoe against Eddie’s, but Eddie only nods silently without looking up. His leg is bouncing in small, jerky motions, his hands clenched around his knees.

Richie’s heart thumps in his chest. He wants to kneel on the floor next to Eddie so he can check on him, look in his eyes, but— “How we doing on time, Lance Corporal Stanley?”

Stan checks his phone again. “A little over twenty minutes until the bus leaves. What else?”

“How much should I take out of the ATM?” Ben asks.

“We owe them about sixty bucks for the night,” Richie says. “So, like, three thousand lira? Plus money for the bus ride back here for two of you, and then tickets for the four of us _back_ to Damascus, and then money for the cab to the border…”

“So what, forty-five hundred lira?” Ben says. “Just to be safe?”

“Yeah, that sounds—”

“Hey, wait,” Mike interrupts. “The people going to Damascus aren’t going to be back until at least four, right? Three hours there, maybe an hour to find an ATM, three hours back… That’s way past checkout time. We’re going to have to pay for another night here.”

“We don’t have to stay at the hostel, though,” Richie says. “We can go back to that café or something.”

“But what about everyone’s bags?” Stan asks. “There’s no way you’re going to be able to lug four big backpacks around Palmyra, and it would only slow down Mike and Ben if they took theirs with them all the way to Damascus and back.”

“Plus, isn’t the whole point of you guys staying behind to show the hostel that we’re coming back?” says Ben. “I don’t think you _can_ check out.”

Richie sighs. “Fuck, you’re right. Another night it is.” His fingers fumble his lighter out of his pocket and start flicking it off and on. “Think we could switch to a smoking room, though? I could fucking use one right about now.”

The rest of them ignore him. “Jesus, so we need like… seven thousand lira total?” Ben asks, looking a little shell-shocked. “Seventy-five hundred?”

“It sounds way worse in thousands,” Stan says. He’s probably trying to sound reassuring but it only comes out terse.

“It’s still like a hundred and fifty bucks, though.”

“I can take some money out, too,” Mike says, putting a hand on Ben’s shoulder. “You don’t have to pay for all of it.”

“Yeah, and you can take me and Eddie’s cash, too,” Richie says, fishing in his pocket for his wallet. “We’re not going anywhere. Just leave us enough for some lunch. How much you got on you, Spaghetti?”

Eddie doesn’t look up; he just wordlessly pulls out his wallet and holds it out. His hand is pale and shaking as Richie takes the wallet from it.

“Count the benjamins, would ya, Benjamin?” Richie says, flipping both wallets over to Ben without even looking, eyes on Eddie’s bowed head. He hesitates for a moment—fighting memories of getting _too close_, taking _too much_—but then steps closer to Eddie so his hip is flush with Eddie’s shoulder. He puts a hand on his head in what he hopes is a reassuring gesture.

Eddie doesn’t pull away. Richie can feel him trembling, see the muscles tensing in his pale, fishbelly neck. Richie remembers sitting on the planter outside the visa office, babbling helplessly while Eddie’s breathing hitched. _He needs his inhaler_, he thinks. Then: _He doesn’t _want _his inhaler._

Breathlessly, nerves alight, he cards his fingers through Eddie’s hair. It’s soft and clean against the sensitive skin between his fingers; he thinks he can smell Eddie’s sweet shampoo, same as he could last night. The five of them may be in a desperate situation right now, but _this_—touching Eddie so tenderly, so deliberately—is life on the edge.

Eddie sighs and leans harder against his hip. Richie’s heart melts.

“About fifteen hundred altogether,” Ben says, riffling through the bills in Eddie’s wallet. “Is it okay if I take a thousand, Eddie? I think it would help with the bus tickets.”

Eddie nods silently. Mike frowns and takes a step toward him. “Hey, Eddie, are you—?”

“You guys should get going,” Richie interrupts, knowing the last thing Eddie wants is to have everyone focused on him.

The other three hesitate. Mike and Ben are staring at Eddie, but Stan’s eyes lock with Richie’s. He flicks his eyes to Eddie and back, twitches his eyebrows upwards, questioning. _You got this? _

Richie gives a lopsided smile, and nods.

Stan gives a quick nod back and says, “It’s time. We better go.”

“There’s still five hundred in your wallet, Richie,” Ben says, dropping the wallet on the bed. “Do you think that’s enough? It’ll be like seven, eight hours before we—”

“That’s great, Haystack, thanks,” Richie says, holding up a hand. “Now go. Before we all turn into pumpkins or whatever.”

“Ah, yes, that classic fairy tale,” Stan drawls, hefting his backpack over his shoulder, “when Cinderella turned into a pumpkin at midnight and just rolled down the palace steps.”

“Prince Charming was horrified,” Mike says with a grin as he opens the door. “He could never look at a jack-o-lantern the same way again.”

“Har har,” Richie says, replacing his hand in Eddie’s hair. He can feel him shaking. “Now vamoose, you chucklefucks. You’ve got a long day ahead of you.”

Stan gives Richie a nod and turns to the door. Then he stops and turns back, takes three halting steps forward and yanks Richie into a fierce hug. Richie, twisted around and off-balance beside Eddie, has only a second to return it in surprise before Stan is gone and out the door. Ben, a few steps behind him, gives Richie and Eddie (who only barely looks up) a reassuring smile just before he disappears, as well.

Mike pauses in the doorway. He glances at Eddie, then back to Richie, concern etched in his face. “You guys are sure you’ll be all right here?” he asks gently. “One of you can go, I can stay…”

“Mikey, please go. You’re too pure for this Earth,” Richie says, shaking his head. “It’s embarrassing me.”

Mike laughs but nods. “All right, Richie,” he says, turning to go. “We’ll be back before you know it.”

“Lickety split,” Ben calls from the hallway.

“_Inshallah_,” says Stan.

With a small wave and a final look, Mike exits the room, pulling the door closed behind him. It latches with a click.

And then Richie and Eddie are alone.

Phoneless. Friendless. Practically penniless.

Stranded.

In Syria.

Fuck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the ruins at palmyra suffered extensive damage when isis took over. specific to this chapter, [the triumphal arch of palmyra](https://syriaphotoguide.com/palmyra-monumental-arch-%D8%AA%D8%AF%D9%85%D8%B1-%D9%82%D9%88%D8%B3-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%86%D8%B5%D8%B1/), where the boys watch the sunrise, was destroyed by isis in 2015. palmyra castle was also damaged. many of the other parts of the ruins were blown up or dismantled.
> 
> syria and the united states have had a very strained relationship for decades, but especially since the iraq war. when i was there, someone did approach us assuming we were military and seemed relieved (and surprised) to learn that we were neither military nor bush supporters. military service in syria is compulsory (but limited) so it makes sense that someone would assume the same of young americans. over and over, the major theme of interactions i had while in the middle east was that everyone hated the american government but seemed relieved to learn that many american individuals disagreed with actions the government had taken—after all, most arab governments make decisions their people disagree with, too. conversations could still be strained, though, especially considering the language barrier.
> 
> thanks so much to @jajs as always! she’s the best. <3
> 
> feel free to come talk at me on twitter! i’m [@tempestbreak_](https://twitter.com/tempestbreak_).
> 
> arabic glossary:  
_ahlan_: hello  
_‘ammiya_: colloquial arabic  
_aywa_: yeah  
_habibi_: my dear  
_inshallah_: God willing  
_kiifak_: how are you  
_ma sha allah_: lit., god has willed it [said when expressing appreciation, joy, praise, usually as an exclamation]  
_sahha_: lit., health [said in response to a sneeze, like “bless you”]  
_shukran_: thank you  
_shway_: a little; a bit; sort of  
_sijara_: cigarette  
_yaa_: [marker of address, no direct translation but said when you’re addressing someone directly, as in “yaa ritchee”]


	14. february vii: warm light on a winter’s day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from “pink bullets” by the shins (the last of the three syria chapters).

Eddie sucks in a shuddering, rattling breath. Richie falls to the floor in front of him, his hands on Eddie’s knees.

“We’re stuck,” Eddie gasps, his fingers bracketing his wide eyes, “we’re stuck, we’re stuck…”

“Hey, Eddie,” he whispers urgently. “Eddie, are you okay? Look at me, man. Look at me.”

Eddie doesn’t look at Richie, just gasps in another breath, and then another. “I can’t… can’t breathe, Richie,” he says, staring at the floor. “My head is spinning.”

“It’s okay, you’re good,” Richie says in what he hopes is a soothing tone. His own mind is racing. “Uh, uh, take deep breaths, maybe?”

Eddie’s eyes flick up to his in annoyance. “No shit, asshole,” he huffs out, still breathing raggedly. “What the fuck— do you think— I’m trying to do?”

Richie laughs nervously. “Okay, you’re right, that was stupid,” he says. “How about… counting? Like Mike did with you, at the visa place. I’ll count, and you breathe in and out?”

Eddie gasps again and then shakes his head furiously. “No— way. It didn’t work then— and that wasn’t— that wasn’t an _emergency, _Richie.”

“That _wasn’t _an emergency?” Richie repeats, incredulous, images of that day flashing through his mind. _Eddie’s breath hitching, loud and rasping, his free hand clasped over his chest._ “You couldn’t breathe!”

“You think I don’t— know that!?”

“Well, I’m sorry that’s apparently not an emergency to _you_,” Richie shoots back, panic and frustration rising, “but it was a way bigger deal to me than some hostel bullshit!”

Eddie drags his eyes up to him. They’re huge, carved out of his pale face. “How can you— _say _that? We’re trapped here, we’re _trapped, _and—” He sucks in another creaking breath. “—we’re gonna have to— contact the embassy or something— and it’ll be an _international incident_— we’ll be— we’ll be _bargaining chips_—”

Richie’s head starts to swim a little with what Eddie’s saying because… because yeah, Richie didn’t think of _that_, that Syria and the U.S. don’t exactly have a positive political relationship, and it’s not like they told the embassy they were coming here, the only people who know they’re in Syria are Huda, Saleh, Bev, and Bill. Does Syria even _have _a U.S. embassy? Or is it just a consulate?

The whistling of Eddie’s breath refocuses him. Eddie’s eyes are dilated and darting, and Richie knows he’s doing a fucking shitty job, shittier than when he was babbling about Harry Potter outside the visa office. He needs to fucking chill. One of them has to.

“Eddie.” He makes his voice sharp, digging his fingers into the sides of Eddie’s knees. “Eddie, look at me.”

Sucking in air, Eddie’s eyes flit frantically until they land on Richie and hold his. He doesn’t say anything, only gasps for breath.

“Where’s your inhaler, Eds?” Richie asks gently.

Eddie gulps loudly, his breath beginning to rattle louder. “I— I didn’t— _bring it_,” he chokes out, and presses his face into his hands.

Richie’s stomach plummets.

“I thought— such a short— trip— maybe I’d be—”

“No, right, yeah. Of course, that makes sense. You don’t need it anyway.”

“I _do_— I was— _stupid_—”

“Eddie,” Richie says, trying to force his voice into some semblance of firmness, which is not his strong suit even when he’s not trying desperately not to panic himself. “Eds. I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere unless you want me to, okay?

“O—kay.”

“Last time you told me you wanted me to talk. Do you think that would help now?”

“I— I don’t…” Eddie inhales, shuddery, eyes darting. “I don’t _know_, but—”

“Okay, we’ll try it, no skin off my ass.”

Eddie snorts, which turns into a hiccup, and then a wheeze.

“And I also, uh.” Richie wets his lips, swallows dryly. “Last time, I also held your hand and rubbed your back. Would that help?”

Eddie nods strongly, his chest whistling.

“Okay.” Richie moves to sit next to Eddie on the side of the bed. He places one hand on his upper back and begins rubbing in small circles, feeling the way Eddie’s ribs jerk. His other hand he rests palm-up on his knee, an offering. Eddie looks down at it for a moment before slapping his own directly into it and holding tight. Richie gives a squeeze in return and offers a smile.

“Now. Have I ever told you about the time I sprained my ankle trying to run up the wall like Donald O’Connor when I did ‘Make ’Em Laugh’ for my school’s talent show?”

Eddie shakes his head, wheezing.

“You ever seen _Singin’ in the Rain_?”

Eddie shakes his head again.

“Perfect.”

Slowly, slowly, it seems to work. Whether it’s the story, or the hand-holding, or the back-rubbing, Richie’s not sure. The important thing is that by the time he’s done with the story, Eddie’s breathing is not nearly as labored, his ribs are no longer fluttering under Richie’s palms. He even chokes out a laugh when Richie tells him how after all of it, when he was broken and in pain on the floor of the stage, Carla tossed a rose to him, and the petals hit him in the eye and knocked out a contact.

Richie smiles, watching Eddie chuckle wheezingly. “Should I keep talking?”

Eddie shakes his head wearily. “No, I think I’m— good. But I want to— lie down.”

“Okay, you got it.”

Quietly, Richie scoots backwards on the bed, leaving space for Eddie to lean back after him. He feels like he’s trying to coax a skittish, half-wild animal: slow movements, soothing tones… basically everything Richie Tozier usually is _not_. Then again, Richie Tozier is usually also not stranded in Syria with his new best friend-slash-crush who is having a panic attack.

Once Richie has left a suitable berth, Eddie removes his hands from his knees, plants his palms on the mattress, and pushes himself back to lay his head on the pillow. He lifts his legs up—shoes still on, a shock—to curl up on his side, facing away from Richie. He’s still breathing loudly but the trembling is remarkably reduced, and his posture is slightly less hunched, less cagey.

Richie watches him for several seconds, making sure he’s not going to burst back up, another crackling, gasping ball of anxious electricity, before he relaxes himself. He mimics Eddie’s position, lying on his side facing the same direction, but he props his head in his hand, keeping an eye out for any sudden movements, an ear out for any sucking breaths. Then, his own heart pounding, he slowly, shakily reaches out to place his palm on Eddie’s back, and starts again to rub.

“Thanks,” Eddie says, quiet, a little muffled. “That helps.”

Richie swallows, heart thudding. “I’m glad.” Then, grinning, he jokes, “I could give you a full-body massage, if you want. I’ve been told I have magic fingers.” He drums his fingertips a little on a shoulder blade.

Eddie snorts, and Richie feels it in the clench of the muscles of his back, the burst of breath from his reluctantly recovering lungs. “Maybe some other time,” he drawls.

Some tension releases from Richie’s body at Eddie’s tone. It feels reassuring, normal. Like the end is not only in sight but nearly upon them. Richie lets his head lean heavily against his hand, trailing his fingers languidly up and down Eddie’s spine, the warm skin to either side.

_He feels so nice to touch like this_, Richie thinks, and the thought arrives not with a hammer of panic or urgency or guilt but like a warm blanket draped over his shoulders. This touch is not inadvertent, nor by necessity, nor snatched from chance moments of closeness or camaraderie. This is deliberate, unhurried touch. Like this, Richie can focus on the way Eddie relaxes minutely moment by moment against his hand, on the comfort brought by the exchange of warmth and contact. Richie can’t remember the last time he touched someone like this. The last time someone touched _him _like this. He wishes he could ask Eddie to do the same to him.

He pushes that thought down. Eddie’s the one who needs it. He draws his palm back up the line of Eddie’s back and then, knowing it’s what soothed Richie himself when he was young, brushes his fingertips up over the collar of Eddie’s shirt, onto the nape of his warm neck, into the lightly curling tendrils of hair there—skin on skin, nails on scalp—scratching softly.

“Your hair’s getting long,” Richie murmurs, and is surprised by how relaxed it is leaving his lips. Eyelids drooping, he twirls the tip of his index finger in one of the tiny curls, tugging a little.

Eddie hums, and Richie’s not sure whether it’s in response to what he’s said or what he’s done. “I think this is the longest it’s been in years.”

“Really?” Richie flexes his fingertips up higher into the hair at the back of his head and then pulls them out, observing the length between his fingers. “I think it looks nice long.”

“I was planning to get it cut once we get back.”

“Well, it’s your hair, you should wear it how you like.” Richie draws his fingers back down Eddie’s neck to his back. “I’m sure it’ll look good either way.”

Eddie doesn’t respond. As Richie’s hand resumes its slow, soft motion again, over ribs and spine and scapulae and the muscle between them, Eddie’s breathing evens completely. After several minutes, Richie can no longer feel the spastic expansion of Eddie’s lungs, the kicking of Eddie’s heart against his hand when he passes over it. Still, he doesn’t stop.

Eddie doesn’t ask him to.

After a while, though, the silence grates. Richie doesn’t even realize he’s begun humming until Eddie shifts a little, looking over his shoulder. “What is that?”

“Huh? Oh. Uh…” Richie racks his brain. What _is_ he humming? “I think it’s Daft Punk.”

“Wow. I’ve actually heard of them.”

“Yeah, they’re good.” The song clicks in his brain. “Oh, it is them. It goes, _Ooh I don’t know what to do_,” he sings, “_about—_”

(_this dream and you_)

“—_mm-mm, ahh-ahh_, I can’t remember the rest of the lyrics,” he finishes awkwardly, and with a pat to Eddie’s shoulder, finally removes his hand. He rolls onto his back and folds his hands over his stomach, looking up at the ceiling. “You feeling better?”

Eddie nods, shifting so he’s on his side, facing Richie. He tucks one arm under the pillow, and when Richie glances at him, he’s staring right back, his expression unreadable.

Richie cocks an eyebrow. “What’s up, Eds?” he asks, with an anticipatory grin. It’s a setup for Eddie, for his standard _don’t call me Eds_ spike back in his face, for their schtick. For _normal_.

Instead, Eddie frowns, drawing his bottom lip between his teeth. “I, uh… didn’t know you liked guys.”

Richie’s stomach swoops dangerously, heat climbing his neck like choking ivy. “Uhh, yup,” he says, a little brightly. “I do. Too.”

Eddie stares at him. “‘_Too’?_”

“Like, in addition. To girls.”

“Oh, right. So that means you’re…”

“Yup, bi. Sexual,” he adds.

Eddie just nods, still regarding him with an uncertain expression.

Richie meets his gaze for a few moments before he has to look away again. “Uhh, is it a problem?”

Eddie jerks, frowning even more deeply. “What? No. Fuck no. I’m not an asshole.”

“Aw, Eds, it is hard to evaluate ourselves, isn’t it?”

“Well, I’m not _that _kind of asshole,” he grumbles, falling onto his back to mimic Richie. He looks up at the ceiling. “I just… I didn’t know.”

“Yeah, I didn’t think I oughta broadcast it too much while I was here,” Richie says, looking up as well. The ceiling, like the rest of the room, is stone. Cracked, like an egg about to hatch.

“That makes sense.” Eddie twists a hand in the hem of his shirt, picking at it. “I guess Stan and Mike, too? Did you know?”

“_No_ idea.”

“Really?”

“Really. God, remember Mike saying Stan was out of my league? I bet the dude just wanted to keep him for himself. I shoulda gone for it while we were still in the hotel.”

“Oh, shut up. You wouldn’t really want to, like… with Stan.”

“Why not? Stan’s a handsome dude!”

Eddie whips his head to stare at Richie. Richie grins back, his tongue behind his teeth.

“Are you fucking serious?”

“Do you not think Stanley is attractive?”

“No! I mean, he’s _fine_, I guess, but—”

“And he’s mean to me, so you know he’s my type.”

“What the fuck, stop fucking joking about that.”

Richie laughs. “I’m not joking! I really do like people who are mean to me. It’s fucked up, Eds.”

“Don’t fucking call me Eds,” Eddie bites back. Richie grins more widely. Eddie frowns harder. “Would you really want to fuck Stan?”

“Well, I’d buy him dinner first.”

“Answer the fucking question.”

Richie rolls his eyes good-naturedly, mimicking the motion with a roll of his head along the pillow. “Ehhhh, maybe not,” he concedes. “At this point, it would be like kinda like doin’ it with my dad. Or, like, my super-responsible, way-older cousin or something. And he did say he would kiss Mike. Hey, maybe that’ll happen, huh? Some illicit gay romance in the Arab world? Imagine the sneaking around. So sexy!”

Eddie furrows his brow. “It would be dangerous.”

“True.”

“Probably not worth the risk.”

“Perhaps. But imagine the romance, Eds! The passion, the secret trysts! And I’m sure Stan would— Wait.” Richie cuts himself off, shaking his head with a laugh. “I actually do not want to imagine how Stanley Uris would make sure he didn’t get caught having sex.”

“Yeah.”

“And anyway, Stan and Mike might not even actually be really into dudes, who knows. People kiss people. It happens.”

“Does it?” Eddie says doubtfully. “People just kiss people?”

“In my experience.” Richie thinks of Sandy, of Carla. Of Connor. “Usually doesn’t mean anything.”

“Not in mine. I’ve only kissed like, three people.”

“Well, you also said you hadn’t really been in a bar before January. Once the liquor flows, usually so does the kissing. I mean, you saw me and Sandy outside Books@.”

“Don’t remind me.”

Richie laughs. “Oh, so we’re not joking about that one yet?” he teases, turning his head to look at Eddie. He’s looking sidelong back at Richie, face set in an exasperated grimace. “Fine,” Richie chuckles, returning his gaze to the ceiling. “Just trying to add some levity to this shit. Guess I’ll go fuck myself.”

Eddie huffs out a laugh, too. “Dick.”

“Ass.”

“Guess you’d know all about those two put together, huh?” Eddie shoots back.

Richie hoots, bringing his knees up. “Sure do. Maybe I’ll tell you about it sometime.”

Eddie turns his head, smirking. “Oh? Too long a story to tell in the six hours we have until Ben and Mike get back?”

“I _mean_,” Richie laughs, rolling onto his side to face Eddie, “if the tellin’ took as long as the doin’, we’d—

“—be here for days,” he finishes, at the same time as Eddie says, “—run out of stuff to talk about in ten minutes.”

They burst into laughter.

Eddie shifts onto his side, too, his eyes crinkled up at the sides. Richie catches just the shadow of a dimple before he rests his cheek on the pillow. “You’re such an idiot, Richie.”

“So you’ve said.” Richie smiles widely, fondly, back at him. He feels warm all over. “But you also said I was your best friend here, so.”

“Yeah, well. That was under duress. Huda was going to excommunicate you from the program otherwise.”

“For my very good Eddie Kaspbrak panic attack emergency rescue skills,” sighs Richie. He lifts an arm, calls at the ceiling: “Look at me now, Huda! I’m a pro!”

Eddie laughs. “You did do a lot better since the last one.”

“Thanks, Eds. Told you I have magic fingers.” He waggles them in Eddie’s face.

Eddie rolls his eyes and shoves Richie’s hand down on the blanket, pinning it there with his. “It wouldn’t have been so bad if I’d brought my inhaler.”

“Sure. But now you know you really don’t need it.” He smiles lopsidedly at Eddie. “Right?”

Eddie frowns lightly, looking down. He chews his lip. “Yeah. That’s true.”

“Yeah. Uh.” Richie clears his throat, bites the inside of his cheek. Trying to ignore the fact that Eddie’s hand is still on top of his, warm and dry. “You said, back then at the visa office, that you’d tell me about the inhaler, some other time.” When he glances up, Eddie is staring back at him. “You think that time is now?”

Eddie takes a deep breath and then lets it out. He nods. “Yeah,” he says. “I think I do.”

Eddie tells him about the inhaler. But first, he has to tell him about his mom. Richie knows some of it already. He knows what Eddie told him that night in the hostel, and Eddie seems to know that he talked to Richie about her but not what exactly he said, and Richie doesn’t want to interrupt. He just listens.

Eddie tells him how his mother makes him sick. Not in a jokey, melodramatic way, but how she tells everyone he’s sick, tells _him _he’s sick, has always been sick, until he was sure he was. He had allergies, intolerances, a weak immune system. For six months during the year he tried out for Little League, she was convinced the bug bites he kept picking at during practice were sores, that microscopic filaments were growing from them, and she drove him around the state trying to find a doctor to confirm her diagnosis. They all told her there was nothing serious about the bites, that the fibers she was seeing were from clothing, that Eddie likely only said he felt like his skin was crawling because you put the idea in his head in the first place, Mrs. Kaspbrak. She refused to hear it. Eventually, the season ended with Eddie playing barely a single game. His mom gave up on her crusade. Eddie’s skin stopped crawling. All the bugs died with the frost.

He didn’t try out the next year.

His asthma, though, was year-round. Eddie had been using an inhaler since before he could remember, the prescription for which only his hometown pharmacy would fill, so Eddie had to drive back down to Derry every month to pick it up, so his mother could see him, and hug him, and fret over him, and call him her baby, the way she always had.

“And she’d always beg me to stay longer, because driving is so dangerous,” says Eddie. “Never mind how she was the one who made me come down in the first place, how dangerous it was for me to be driving all that distance every month in the first place. She didn’t care about me driving down, only back up. And I thought about that a couple times, in my first two years of school, but… but she’s my mom, you know?”

And he looks up at Richie, his thick eyebrows so low over his dark, half-moon eyes, and Richie’s heart aches.

“Yeah,” he says quietly, and turns over his hand so they’re palm to palm, and slides his fingers between Eddie’s. He squeezes lightly, and the corner of Eddie’s mouth twitches.

“Then I was home over the summer. This past summer. I’d fractured my arm a few weeks earlier, slipping on some ice that hadn’t melted, like I told you, and it hurt like a bitch. Like really, especially after they set it, so they prescribed me some pain killers. But when I got home, my mom, uh...”

He stops, twisting up his mouth, like he doesn’t know quite how to say it. Richie rubs his thumb along the side of Eddie’s index finger, against the knuckle, until he continues.

“She found the pills, and said the doctor at the hospital in Brunswick was a quack, that I’d get addicted to what he gave me and all I needed was Advil and I could go get it at Keene’s. The pharmacy. Where I got my inhaler. And I remember thinking, like—” He exhales in a short burst, incredulous even reliving it. “—‘Seriously? Mr. Keene, the creepy-ass old pharmacist in fucking Derry, knows better than the MD at Mid Coast?’” He shakes his head.

“Did you say anything to her?” Richie asks, eyes flicking from Eddie’s face to their joined hands. Eddie’s is motionless in his, only accepting the slow, light comfort of Richie’s thumb on his finger.

“I mean, yeah,” says Eddie. “Sure. ‘C’mon, Ma, I’m taking them as prescribed. Do you really think I’d abuse my medications? Don’t you trust me?’” He gives Richie a look like, _Ya think that went well? _Richie chuckles. “So I went down to Keene’s to get some fucking Advil, and some of my mom’s meds, too, and I figured I might as well pick up my inhaler while I’m at it. But when I go up to the counter, Mr. Keene says, he goes, ‘Oh, Eddie. I thought you might be coming along pretty soon. Come on into the back.’ And he turns to go into his office.”

“Creepy as fuck,” Richie mutters.

Eddie laughs, his hand twitching in Richie’s. “No kidding. At first I’m like, ‘No way, I’ve seen _Dateline_.’ Like, I’m not a minor anymore but still, stranger danger. But then I start thinking. What if he knows something? What if there’s some complication, something that’s gonna kill me in the inhaler, or the Advil, or whatever the fuck? I don’t know, my mom acts like this guy sells fucking health itself, and it’s not like I believe her, exactly, but…”

“She’s your mom.”

“Yeah. She’s my mom. She wants what’s best for me, right?” He lets out that incredulous snort again. Richie presses his hand. “So anyway, I go into his office, and the guy sits me down and… and offers me a licorice whip.”

Richie barks out a laugh. “What, like a Twizzler?”

“Not even!” says Eddie. “Like an old, hard, black one that’s probably been in the jar since like 1992. Like I’m ten or something, and candy’s gonna calm me down.”

“He was probably confused by how short you are.”

“Fuck off,” Eddie laughs, and squeezes Richie’s hand so hard that Richie lets out a mock cry.

“Ow, ow, owww! Uncle!”

Eddie rolls his eyes and stops squeezing. He doesn’t remove his hand. “Anyway,” he says.

“Anyway,” Richie agrees.

“Once I think about how he’s offering me candy to calm me down, that’s when I really start thinking he’s gonna tell me something bad. I’m dying, or my mom’s dying, or _he’s _dying and it’s super contagious or something, I dunno. So I pop out my old inhaler and take a puff to calm myself down, and then he says, ‘That. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.’” Eddie takes a deep breath. “And he tells me…”

And Eddie tells Richie. How creepy old Mr. Keene told him that the medicine in his inhaler was just water. Just water with a little camphor. HydrOx: it was right there in the name, right in front of Eddie all along, but he had never thought to question it. Why would he? It was there to _stop_ him thinking. Stop him thinking about how he only got short of breath when he was frightened, never when he exerted himself. Stop him thinking about why the idea of his mother finding out he had done anything wrong gave him the worst asthma attacks. Stop him thinking about why his mother liked him best when he was sick, but only if it was in the way she told him he was.

And Eddie doesn’t cry in the telling. Richie thinks _he_ would want to, if he were in Eddie’s shoes. Richie would use a Voice to tell it. Kinky Briefcase, Sexual Accountant, perhaps, or if Norman Bates had a distinctive accent, Richie can’t recall. But even though Eddie doesn’t cry, Richie can tell it’s hard for him. Hard in the way he glances up furtively to read Richie’s face and then quickly away, hard in the way he tears at the skin on his lip with his teeth, hard in the way he laughs too sharply when Richie makes a well-timed joke.

Hard in a way that means that maybe no one else has ever heard the whole story.

“So I went home and confronted her,” Eddie says with a sigh. “It was awful. She cried a lot, and normally I can’t handle it when she cries, normally I’d just cave and apologize and feel like the world’s biggest asshole. I mean, what kind of monster makes their mom cry?” He swallows, frowning more deeply, staring only at their hands now, how Richie’s flexing one finger at a time so they slide against the skin of Eddie’s knuckles. “But it was different this time. I knew she was lying. And I could… I could _see _she wasn’t really crying. She was making the noises and covering her face, but her eyes were totally dry.”

When he doesn’t go on, Richie asks, “So what did you do?”

Ruefully, Eddie quirks up one side of his mouth. “I left.”

Richie looks up at him. Eddie looks back. He runs his tongue over his battered lower lip, and Richie feels an empty twinge beneath his skin with how badly he wants to close the distance between them, lick over that abused lip, soothe Eddie’s mouth with his own. Kiss him so softly, so gently, the way he touched his ribs, his spine, the back of his neck; the way he ought to be kissed. Kiss him to comfort him and be kind to him and revive him.

_Kiss him to show him that I_…

Richie looks down at their hands entwined. He twists his fingers lightly against Eddie’s so he can run his thumb over the lines of Eddie’s palm. Eddie’s fingers curl lightly over the backs of Richie’s, and Richie aches to lean down and brush his lips over Eddie’s knuckles.

_But he probably already knows_.

“Where did you go?” he asks quietly, thinking he knows the answer.

Eddie is a long time responding. Richie thinks he’s watching him, but he doesn’t look up to confirm. He traces the edges of Eddie’s thumb, the web of skin to the forefinger. Eddie’s palm is starkly lined, red arcs curving and crisscrossing each other, grooves worn by how Eddie grasps a pencil, how he counts to five, how he holds someone else’s hand. Richie trails his thumb along the deepest line, from the heel to just below his index finger. Richie wishes he could read it. Wishes he knew what it meant.

“I went to Myra’s.”

Richie nods, and stills his hand. He plasters on a grin. “For some sexual healing?”

Eddie glares at Richie. “It wasn’t like that.”

“_When I get that feeling_,” Richie sings heedlessly, and he pulls his hand out of Eddie’s to put a finger to his ear like he’s trying to find the note, “_I want sexual heeeaaaling_.”

“Shut the fuck up.”

Richie closes his eyes, like he’s really feelin’ it, belting at the ceiling: “_Sexual healing is something that’s GOOD FOR—” _

Eddie slaps a hand over his mouth. Richie’s eyes fly open, heart pounding.

“Oh my _god_, shut up,” Eddie says, half-laughing.

Richie stares at him, his heart buffeting itself madly against his chest.

_Shh, you don’t want to wake the others, do you? Don’t want them to know how hard—_

“Wow, that was surprisingly effective,” Eddie says smugly. He props himself up on an elbow so he’s looking down at Richie. “I should just carry a gag with me.”

Richie tries desperately not to let his eyelids flutter shut. _Fuck_.

“Move your hand or I’ll lick it,” he says, muffled against Eddie’s palm. The palm that he was just studying, just trailing his thumb over. He could run the tip of his tongue along those same lines, follow the path his thumb took up from heel to forefinger, flatten his tongue there and swallow Eddie’s index finger, suck on it hard and wet while Eddie watched him with those huge, dark eyes.

Eddie cocks an eyebrow. “You wouldn’t.”

_Look at you. Are you always like this or is it just because it’s me?_

Richie swallows, blood zinging in his veins. He’s beginning to shake. He sucks in a breath and starts gathering spit in his mouth, snorts deep in his throat like he’s going to hock up a loogie.

With a yelp, Eddie jerks his hand away. “What the _fuck_, Richie? You’re fucking disgusting!”

“I spat on you the very first time I met you, Eds, you oughta be used to it by now!” Richie laughs, high-pitched, overcome with nervous, jittering energy. Suddenly the room is close, suffocating. Cold, stagnant air, like a morgue. He feels like he’s going to bounce off the walls, or tear them apart with his nails.

He shoots up in the bed, knocking Eddie back in surprise. He grits his teeth in what’s meant to be a smile. “Let’s get outta here.”

“Huh?”

Richie levers himself up so he can scoot frenetically down to the edge of the bed. “Get some fresh air. It’ll be good, for both of us. You hungry?”

“I mean. Not really.”

“Adrenaline, probably! Bet you’ll be hungry later.” Richie picks up his wallet from where Ben left it and shoves it in his back pocket. He lifts his leather jacket, draped over his backpack, and slides his arms through the sleeves, shrugs it on. When he glances up at Eddie, he still hasn’t moved. “What’s up?”

“Nothing, I just…” He looks down, frowning at the blanket. “I thought we weren’t supposed to leave. I thought we were collateral.”

“I’m sure Stan and the others explained on their way out. Or we can tell her ourselves that we’re just getting lunch or whatever.”

Eddie chews his lip, ripping the thin skin, and Richie feels so pent up and wild he’s going to snap if Eddie keeps that up. He’s going to grab him by the face and _make_ him stop, suck on his lower lip until he agrees not to worry, not to hurt.

“I mean, all our stuff is still here,” Richie goes on, wrenching away his gaze. “She’s gonna see us leaving without any of our bags. We’re already paying for a second night we’re not even gonna be here for. It’s not like we’re in prison, Eds, we can leave the damn building.”

“What do you even want to do? We have like no money.”

“I don’t know! Anything. The ruins are free, let’s go back to the ruins. Let’s get some cheap snacks and eat them in the fucking ruins.”

Eddie snorts. “Like a picnic?”

“Yeah, like a goddamn picnic,” says Richie, finally locating his beanie and pulling it on, plastering down his frizzy hair. He pulls his useless phone out of the front pocket of his backpack to check the time. “We’ve been here almost two hours already, we have at least four more.”

He drops the phone back in the pocket. Then, after a second, he reaches in again and pulls out his digital camera, slides it in his jacket pocket. He twists to look back at Eddie.

He still hasn’t moved. He’s still contemplating the movement of his fingers picking at the blanket, shredding his lip between his teeth, and Richie’s eyes are stuck to Eddie’s mouth, unable to look away. He feels like he’s sinking into something like quicksand, or else he’s caught in a riptide and being carried out to sea and these are his last violent moments to flail and scream before he just says fuck it and lets himself be pulled under.

“C’mon, Eds,” Richie says, his voice hoarse. “I can’t stay in this room for four more hours. I’ll go insane.”

Finally, Eddie sighs. “Fine.” He rolls over to the edge of the bed. “But no more Pringles. I’m so sick of Pringles.”

***

It’s cold and gray and wet outside. The town is quiet. The ruins are deserted, even more desolate and forgotten than the day before. They huddle under the craggy remains of the overhang in front of the Temple of Bel, tucked between two columns, to eat their meager lunch of juice and ketchup-flavored potato chips. Richie tries to ignore how Eddie observes him almost warily as he pops the cap on his bottle of mango juice and downs half of it in one go.

“It’s actually kinda cool to be here again,” says Eddie, after a moment. He looks out at the stubby quarter-columns surrounding the temple, ringed with brown puddles.

Richie takes another swig of his juice with a slightly shaking hand. It’s easier to be close to Eddie out here in the open air, but his body is still on edge. Jitters lance up his legs and arms every time he catches Eddie glancing at him out of the corner of his eye.

“Yeah, it’s like we have the whole place to ourselves,” he says, all forced brightness. He smothers the note of unnamed malaise the thought strikes in his gut. “Wanna explore a little more once we’re done eating?”

Eddie regards him for a moment. Richie doesn’t look back at him.

Eddie shrugs, rummaging in the bag of chips when Richie offers it to him. “Sure, if that’s what you want,” he says slowly. “I guess we’ve got time to kill.”

When they’re finished, Richie holds out his hand to take the empty chip bag from Eddie, who passes it to him wordlessly, and tucks it in his jacket pocket to throw away later. Eddie stands up and dusts off the seat of his pants before offering Richie a hand. Richie stares at it for a split second before accepting, and Eddie hauls him up before him. The touch sends a jolt of adrenaline rocketing up his spine, and he nearly stumbles forward, catching himself with a hand on Eddie’s shoulder.

“Watch it, man,” Eddie laughs up into his face, and Richie’s mind rushes screaming back to the party that first week in the hotel when Eddie pulled him up off his ass and he was—

_—feeling Eddie’s warm hand in his and looking down at Eddie’s starry, crinkled-up eyes, and wanting so badly to kiss Eddie’s upturned mouth that it made him queasy._

He jumps back as if burned and mumbles an apology, ignoring how Eddie stares at him as he brushes past.

They roam the ruins aimlessly. Richie has so much energy he wants to run like crazy, like he hasn’t run since he was a kid, to run and run and run until he keels over. For a brief, desperate moment, he wants more than anything to run away_ from Eddie_, but Eddie is always there next to him, like he knows that Richie could bolt at any second. And Richie doesn’t think he could get away, anyhow. If he took off, something would pull him back. He imagines himself like Wile E. Coyote in a giant ACME slingshot, running and running until it’s at the end of its elastic and he’s catapulted through the air, hurtling inevitably back to Eddie.

Instead of running, he climbs almost everything he sees, conquering half-columns and shattered arches. Then he leaps off and lands with a thud, feeling the hard gravel jar his knees, sending up splashes of mud. Eddie watches him quietly from the ground, and Richie climbs higher and higher every time, wondering if he can break through the atmosphere, escape his gravity.

But on the fourth or fifth time Richie clambers up a crumbled ancient wall, when he turns around at the top, Eddie is nowhere to be seen. Richie frowns, his stomach lurching, feeling empty with the loss, bereft and off-balance. He jumps down to go in search of him and finds him scrambling up to the top of a squat craggy stone to sit atop it. He gives Richie a wave and a proud, uneasy grin.

_I don’t actually _get_ vertigo. But I get freaked at the idea that I _might_ get vertigo. Fucking stupid, right?_

As Richie waves back, he feels something welling in him. Proud and uneasy, like Eddie’s smile; and inexorable and immense, like the expanse of sky and ground and empty civilization around them. He pulls out his camera, and Eddie flips it off with a smile. Eddie doesn’t ask for help down. Richie is there anyway, in case he needs it.

After that, Richie doesn’t want to run away so much. Instead, they pass the camera back and forth for a while, taking pictures of each other in silly poses, making photo opportunities where there are none. Then Richie rediscovers the timer function, and the multiple-shot function, and they look for places to take pictures together. They find a slab of broken entablature that fell lopsided over a toppled column and pretend it’s a seesaw for one picture, sitting on either end from each other; in the next, Eddie is balancing on the center, hands out to either side like he’s surfing while Richie points directly into the camera lens. They find two columns next to each other and clamber on top of them, striking a new pose with each red warning blink of the camera, like they’re in a photo booth. Richie holding up his arms like a T-rex. Eddie pretending to Force-choke Richie. Both of them doing their signature gestures from Bev’s birthday.

After each picture they jump down and jog back to the camera. Richie navigates to the viewing screen, and Eddie looks over his shoulder and laughs, teasing Richie for his pose, his expression. He laughs at himself, too.

“I look ridiculous,” he says to the one of them seesawing. He’s smiling open-mouthed, letting his tongue loll out the side like a dog’s.

“You look like you’re having fun,” Richie says, still slightly buzzing with tamped-down energy. “Ever heard of it?”

They lose track of time exploring. The gray, overcast sky occludes any movement of the sun, any elongation of shadows; it feels like they could have spent hours or no time at all wandering abandoned Palmyra. Even so, after a while, Richie notices that Eddie is growing antsy, shifting on his feet when they enter a new ruined courtyard, climb inside another crumbling tomb. Finally, when they’re sitting at the edge of a dug-out mausoleum, their feet dangling over the deep scoop in the earth, Richie turns to Eddie.

“Well,” he says, slapping a thigh, “should we start heading back?”

Eddie looks over at him. His dark eyes drag over Richie’s face. “You sure you’re good?”

And Richie realizes with a start that all of this was _Eddie _tending to _him_. As sure as he’d told Eddie some dumbass high school story and rubbed his back and held his hand, Eddie had come with him to the open air to run and jump and climb and take stupid pictures and never once complained. He feels that immense _something_ that he’s sinking into, that’s carrying him out to sea. Now it’s welling in him again, in his throat and behind his eyes. He squints hard to hide it.

“Yeah, I’m good.”

Eddie gives him a relieved smile, looking at him in that sanded-down way he’s had over the past three days. “Then yeah. Let’s.”

***

As soon as they get back to the room, though, Richie’s spine begins to tingle again, sparking with that sense of trapped dread. The walls are too close. _Eddie _is too close.

He averts his eyes as Eddie bends over his backpack to check his phone. “Wow, the time really flew. Only an hour or so now. Assuming they didn’t miss the bus…”

Richie claps him hard on the back before he can dwell. “Even if they did, they can just catch the next one. We have the room for the whole night.”

“I guess so.”

“That’s the spirit. Now how shall we spend our few remaining minutes before we’re reunited?” Richie shucks off his jacket and beanie, tosses the trash from lunch into the waste basket.

“Not sure.” Eddie’s eyes flick towards the bed, and Richie’s heart leaps into his throat, his bones beginning again to vibrate.

_It’s the only place to sit. It doesn’t mean anything._

Richie says, “I could put something on the TV…”

“Oh, hey.” Eddie leans down and picks up Ben’s camera in its leather case. “You wanna look at the pictures Ben took? He was showing them to me before we found out about the hostel. I think I know how to bring them up.”

“Sure thing, Spaghetti.”

“Not my name,” Eddie grumbles. He sits down on the bed and slips off his sneakers, then swings his legs up onto it, scooting until his back is against the pillows, and—

And images surge through Richie’s mind. Of him and Eddie sitting on the bed, of him leaning over Eddie’s shoulder to look at the pictures, speaking into Eddie’s ear, breathing on Eddie’s neck, kissing Eddie’s neck, _biting _Eddie’s neck—

“Uhh…” Richie jerks his thumb towards the bathroom. “Just let me take a leak and I’ll be right there.”

Eddie grimaces as Richie closes the door behind him.

In the bathroom, Richie takes a deep breath, his heart battering itself against his ribs. He turns on the faucet and wets his hands, then his face. He stares at himself dripping in the dirty mirror. He thinks he looks calm. He feels like he’s going crazy. He’s felt like a sailor in a storm this whole day, stumbling across the deck while saltwater slaps him in the face, half-falling over the side to vomit. The only time he felt calm was when he was rubbing Eddie’s back, and that was stupid, _stupid_ to feel calm while he was touching Eddie, because touching Eddie is what makes him feel craziest of all.

Because Eddie _let_ him.

In the short time he’s known Eddie, Richie has not understood Eddie, under most circumstances, to readily accept touch. Arms draped around shoulders, hands mussing hair, fingers pinching cheeks—all get slapped away. Richie can initiate the touch because he knows it won’t last long enough to be examined. In fact, the only times he has touched Eddie for longer than a few seconds have been in moments of Eddie’s vulnerability. Panicking outside the visa office, falling asleep on the bus, this morning.

Last night.

Richie meets his gaze in the mirror again. Thinking about last night puts an edge in his face, a tenseness, a muscle jumping in his jaw. It was a dream, sure, but he’s not entirely convinced that _all_ of it was. In the beginning, when he had Eddie’s back pressed against his chest, the scent of Eddie’s shampoo in his nose, his own cock thickening against Eddie’s ass… Eddie was so warm against him that Richie can’t fully believe that was all in his head.

Richie remembers reading once that the sled dogs that run the Iditarod learn to dig burrows in snowbanks and curl up inside them overnight to stay warm in the subzero temperatures, filling the space with their own body heat like a furnace. And the other day, Stan and the others all joked about Richie being a dog and he denied it, but maybe it’s true, maybe he is after all, something half-wild and primal, because last night, Richie wanted to dig himself into Eddie, sink into him, burrow inside his skin and head and heart and carve out a space for himself there, heat them both up from the inside. And when he stopped himself just in time and stumbled into this very bathroom to spill out that need, guilt arrived to shout down that desire—but it could not erase it. It’s still here, blazing bright and too-big and damning in Richie’s chest like a swallowed stone, like a full moon over snow. It’s in eyes that stare and claws that twitch and a tongue that slavers when he thinks of coiling himself around Eddie and drowning in that sinful heat.

And this morning Eddie let Richie touch him. Eddie let Richie slide a hand down his spine, bury fingers in his hair, trail his thumb over the lines of his palm. Eddie let Richie squeeze his hand, even squeezed Richie’s back, too hard, of course: a joke. Tracing the edges of Eddie’s fingers with his, Richie felt like Eddie might actually let him burrow into his heart. Like Eddie would let Richie pull him close, chest to chest, drape an arm over him and rub his back with his nose pressed into his hair. Like Eddie—Richie thinks, with a dizzying burst of panic behind his eyes that makes Richie clench his wet hands even harder on the porcelain—like Eddie might even let Richie kiss him.

Whether from the emotional whiplash of the day, the fact that he’s running only on potato chips and the dregs of breakfast, or the sheer heady madness of the thought itself, Richie feels his stomach lurch. He sinks into a squat, pressing his forehead against the cool porcelain between his white-knuckled hands.

“It’s because he was freaking out,” Richie whispers, eyes closed. “It’s because you were here.”

_My happy thought was also from tonight. It was that you stayed with me._

“So you fucking stayed with him. So what? If Mike were here, he would have been the same way. Or Stan, or Ben. You’re not special.”

_I told her that you piss me off and make me want to scream but you’re like my best friend here._

“And even if you _are_, it doesn’t mean anything more than that. You’re his friend. You’re just his friend. If he knew… if you ever made it clear beyond a shadow of a doubt…”

_It feels like there’s something _different _about me here. I’m pissed off at you all the time, but I don’t know why._

“Eddie is straight!” Richie hisses, eyes screwed up tight. He slams a palm hard against the sink. “He has a girlfriend, he’s straight. He’s straight, he’s straight, he’s straight.”

Richie is eighty…-three percent sure.

***

When Richie opens the door, Eddie is lying on the bed. His shoes are off, one leg bent upwards, the other outstretched. His socks are plain white, stained with yellow-brown sand where it must have gotten inside his sneakers and been crushed beneath his heels, the balls of his feet. He looks up when Richie exits the bathroom and quirks up one side of his mouth.

“Did you fall in?”

Richie wants to crawl over him, press him into the mattress, bury his tongue in his mouth.

_Eddie might let him._

“Yup,” he says loudly, “but that’s just how I normally take a bath.”

Eddie snorts. “I would expect nothing less.”

Richie continues to stand there.

Eddie lifts an eyebrow. “What’s up?”

“Huh? Oh, nothing. Just, uh.” He glances over his shoulder at the darkened bathroom, grinning uneasily. “You do _not _wanna go in there.” He waves his hand in front of his nose dramatically.

Eddie screws up his face. “So your joke is that you took a stinky shit and then took a bath in the same toilet water?”

“So it would seem.” He gestures at himself from head to toe. “Trashmouth.”

“I’ll say.”

But Eddie might let Richie put his trash mouth on his. If Richie made a move. Eddie might let him.

Richie doesn’t move.

Eddie lifts Ben’s camera. “So you wanna look at these pictures or not?”

“Oh, yeah.”

Still he doesn’t move.

Eddie frowns at him. “Okay. You gonna get on the bed?”

“I was thinking,” Richie blurts out, and abruptly he feels like he’s going to burst out of his skin, howl at the sky.

“Yeah?”

Helplessly, Richie begins to pace. It’s only a narrow lane between the end of the beds and the wall where their backpacks are propped up, but still he paces. He nearly trips over Mike’s bag.

“We’re in Palmyra,” he says, thoughts racing and overlapping and banging together. He glances furtively at Eddie.

Eddie is staring at him. “Yes?”

“So it’s like Pal-_Myra_.” He grins. It feels like baring his teeth.

“Oh.” Eddie blinks. “Yeah, I guess I hadn’t thought of that.”

“So tell me about Myra,” Richie says, like it’s a topic of conversation and not self-torture. “I feel like I know nothing about her. What’s she like? How’d you meet?”

_Tell me about _her_._

He knows Eddie is still staring at him as he paces the narrow strip at the foot of the bed. He ignores him, fiddling with his glasses, cleaning them fastidiously, examining them in the overhead light.

“Umm… we met through class. We’re both IB&M majors.”

“So you have similar interests.”

_Tell me she understands you. _

“I mean, kind of, I guess. We tend to have similar thoughts about things, I suppose. We had to work together on a final project, and we both wanted to do it on the financial effects of the spread of bird flu.”

Richie barks out a laugh, replacing his glasses. His heart is smashing itself to bits against his ribs. “So that’s when you knew she was the one.”

_Tell me she’s the one for you._

Eddie is still staring at him. Ben’s camera is forgotten in his lap. “What?”

“You’ve been together since, like, freshman year, right?”

“Yeah…”

“That’s a long time to be with one person in college.”

_Tell me you’re going to be with that one person forever._

“Is it?”

“It is! So you must really care about each other.”

_Tell me she’s good to you._

“I guess so.”

“You guess so,” Richie echoes, agitatedly running a hand through his tangled hair. “Don’t you guys say, ‘I love you’? Don’t you talk about the future? Marriage, kids, white picket fence?”

_Tell me she’s good _for_ you._

“Richie, what…”

“I mean, I _saw_ you take a sip during the game,” Richie babbles. “When Mike said, ‘Never have I ever been in love,’ you took a sip, so you’ve been in love. And you said you’ve only kissed three people in your life, and you said you’ve been with her for two years, and you said you’ve only ever been with one person, so… so you’re in love with her, right? So you two must be in love.” He stops pacing and lifts his head to stare at Eddie. “Right?”

Eddie’s face is frozen in a twist of shock and bewilderment, a knot between his furrowed brows. His eyes are dark and wide, and his lips are slightly parted, and Richie wants to press a thumb to his bottom lip and part them farther, replace his thumb with his mouth and tongue. Richie swallows hard, his heart hammering at his sternum, his every nerve and muscle fiber trembling with the desire to throw himself over the bed, to wrap Eddie in his arms and kiss him and taste him and find out if he would _let him_.

_Tell me she gets you tell me she loves you tell me she’s good to you tell me tell me tell me so I don’t have to think I could be better._

Eddie takes a breath. And the door bursts open. Mike and Ben spill into the room.

***

They arrive in a flurry of action, and Richie, at this point little more than a ball of raw nerves unraveling like yarn, is so grateful he has to choke in a sob at the sight of Mike and Ben. He throws himself on Mike to cover it up, and basks in the Mike’s strength, his solidity. Then he hugs Ben, and Mike hugs Eddie, and Eddie hugs Ben, and by then Richie feels like he’s slowly rolling himself back up, gathering his loose, bare strings and stuffing them inside. He even shoots a grin at Eddie and gives his hair a friendly ruffle, pretending that Eddie’s eyes don’t linger on him afterwards.

They rush to gather their bags, pay the hostel, and book it back to the station to catch yet another bus to Damascus. Mike and Ben look exhausted but exhilarated as they fill them in on their day, far more action-packed than Richie and Eddie’s. When they ask what Richie and Eddie got up to, Richie tells them about the ruins in the rain and shows Ben and Mike the pictures they took and ignores how Eddie stares at him the whole time.

It’s past midnight by the time they make it through the border checkpoint, and they’re falling asleep on their feet. They call their host families on their phones that suddenly work again, and Mike tells them he has a text from Stan saying he arrived safely back at their host family’s house. They plead with one of the few cab drivers still lingering on the Jordan side for the two-hour ride to Amman, but there are only four of them this time, and before long they’re bumping down the road, Eddie in the front as usual.

Richie doesn’t even realize he’s fallen asleep against Mike until he blinks awake as they trundle up to their first stoplight in hours, on the outskirts of Amman. When he lifts his head, he sees Eddie is the only one of their group still awake.

“How we doin’, Eds?” he yawns.

“Almost home,” Eddie says quietly over his shoulder, “against all odds.”

“Toldja we wouldn’t be an international incident.”

“You are never not an incident waiting to happen.”

“Hm. Doesn’t roll off the tongue quite like ‘Trashmouth’.”

Eddie snorts softly. “You’ll have to tell the guy where your house is. Wake Mike up, too.”

The cab rolls up to Richie’s host family’s house at half-past-two in the morning. The orange-lit street is empty but for some stray cats that scatter when Richie opens the car door to the cold night air. The yellow moon is only a sliver in the sky.

“See you in six hours,” he says to the others with a grin. “I’ll miss you guys.”

Mike laughs, and Ben gives him a sleepy smile. His dark eyes reflecting the moonlight, Eddie says, “Get some sleep, Richie.”

“It’ll be hard to sleep without you guys now. I need a record of Ben’s snoring.”

He lets himself in by the unlocked side door and locks it behind him. The house is quiet and dark as he pads through to his room. Bill is sleeping soundly in his bed; as Richie slides out of his pants and overshirt, he wonders how Lebanon was. He pulls down the covers and slides under them, thinking how he’s never been so relieved to feel the Pokemon sheets, the too-short foam mattress, the ruffly edges of the blue-patterned comforter that tell him he can finally rest because he’s safe and he’s home. His head hits the pillow and he has only a moment to hazily think that there is something missing—twitching fingertips, a smell of spring—before he slips under.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks so much to [@jajs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jajs/pseuds/jajs) for the beta read on this one. i really beat myself up and down for this chapter because i wanted to get it just right and she helped so much.
> 
> thanks also to kayla and the wet eddie rights gc for listening to me bitch about this chapter and especially to laser for all the yelling. this one's for you, buddy. <3
> 
> feel free to come talk at me on twitter! i’m [@tempestbreak_](https://twitter.com/tempestbreak_).


	15. march i: you’ve just been thinking / that’s what you do, baby

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title is from “dare” by gorillaz

**richie: **carla okay i know ur not there and ur probably not gonna be there for a whiel but i have to talk to someone about this and ur the only person who i could so  
im back from syria  
idk if i told u i was going to syria?   
well i went, with eddie and a couple other guys on the program and yesterday we ran out of money and me and eddie were straended in palmyra for like 6 hrs while everyone else had to go back to damascus to get money but everything is fine now anyway  
something happened  
like we didnt kiss or anything but  
we touched  
like a lot  
i was rubbing his back and we held hands and  
fuck, we held hands  
fuck  
saying it like that makes it seem so much more like, real than it feels i guess   
it wasnt like, really a romantic thing tho he had a panic attack, hence the back rubbing, and then he told me about his fucked up childhood so i held his hand because  
because he was upset i dont fucking know  
and then we left the room for a while and when we came back it felt weird like something was going to happen and i freaked out and started asking him about his girlfriend and carla im a fucking mess carla  
its the middle of class and im freaking out bc hes right here and i cant stop thinking about it and  
WHAT IF HE WANTED ME TO KISS HIM CARLA???  
…  
i mean, he probably didn’t  
…………………..  
but what if he did??

***

“You wanna get Lebnani Snack for lunch?”

Richie jumps and slams his laptop shut. Eddie is leaning a hand on the desk beside him, his backpack slung over one shoulder. He looks significantly less tired than Richie feels, his eyes oddly alert.

“Oh,” says Richie, swallowing roughly, “sure. Might be nice to get all the _Fashileen _together, actually. I feel like I haven’t seen Bev in years. Hey, Mike,” he calls across the room to where Mike’s sliding his laptop into his backpack. “You down for the Snack?”

Mike smiles widely despite the dark circles under his eyes. “Sure! Stan’s been telling me I should try this chicken thing they have. And it’d be nice to hear how Bill and Bev’s trip was.”

“Probably less eventful than ours,” laughs Richie.

“God, I hope so,” Eddie mutters. The sound of his voice so close behind Richie stands the hairs on the back of his neck on end.

Riche chuckles and rises to gather his things. Eddie is still standing near him, very near, so near it’s making him restrict his motions, tuck in his elbows, like he’s on Thunder Mountain or some shit. “Good idea, Eds,” he says, eyes down, pretending he cares deeply which backpack pocket his pencils go in. “Getting the band back together.”

“Huh? Oh. Yeah. Well, I’ll see you in the lounge.” He brushes past Richie’s chair on his way to the door. Richie very purposely does not watch him walk away.

***

The rest of the Losers’ Club eagerly agree to the suggested group lunch. Ben and Stan look just as exhausted as Mike, yawning blearily as they nod. Bev, on the other hand, looks rejuvenated yet vaguely twitchy; her fingers fiddle compulsively with her lighter before they even leave the lounge. Nevertheless, she gives Richie a bright smile and a light punch on the shoulder, her hair looking brighter, more coppery, than he remembers it being.

“Didja get some sun?” he asks, ruffling her hair lightly, quickly, after checking that there are no Jordanians around whose sensibilities he will offend, as he leans against the front door to the office, letting everyone else stream out in front of them. Eddie’s shoulder brushes his upper arm as he passes, leather on cotton.

She grins back at him as she finally uses her BIC to catch the end of a cigarette. “Nothing but.”

Ten minutes later, after sharing a cigarette with Bev and slinging an affectionate arm around Stan’s shoulders on the uphill walk to Wakalat Street, Richie sits down with his sandwich of _sujuq_, a kind of spicy Turkish sausage that he enjoys not just for innuendo purposes. He stretches his long legs out beneath the table, nudging at Bev’s boot with his shoe and stuffing a fry in his grinning mouth. He ignores how Eddie takes the seat beside him and angles the chair towards his knees. He… totally ignores it.

“So how was Lebanon, you two?” Richie asks, eyes on Bev like he’s wearing blinkers. Like he’s not even aware of how Eddie reaches across him for some napkins. “Tell us all about it!”

“Lebanon was g-great,” says Bill. “Buh-Beirut was amazing.”

“I could wear skirts, guys,” gushes Bev, enraptured. “_Skirts_. To my _knee_. And spaghetti-strap tops!”

“We saw the American U-University campus, we walked along the c-cuh-corniche…”

“We saw the Mediterranean, we had good mixed drinks that didn’t cost an arm and a leg…”

“Honestly, e-everyone should go,” Bill finishes with a smile.

“Did you go anywhere other than Beirut?” asks Eddie. He’s swinging his knee a little, and it’s not exactly touching Richie’s, but every time comes closer, Richie feels like he can sense the heat through Eddie’s jeans, like Eddie’s entire body a meteor hurtling through space that is only just going to miss Earth.

Bev nods enthusiastically. “Byblos, Mt. Lebanon, the grotto at Jeita…”

“The ruins at Baalbek. The H-Huh-Hezbollah museum.”

“Yeah, that was _scary_,” says Bev, eyes widening. “It’s like, _deep_ in Hezbollah territory, the museum is glorifying all their anti-Israel activities. Our van got stopped crossing a military checkpoint and I almost had a heart attack.”

“Wow,” says Ben, looking concerned, “did anything happen?”

“Nah, we had our puh-passports with us. Still f-f-freaky, though.”

Richie whistles, grinning and sitting forward in his chair so Eddie is out of his peripheral vision. Well, nearly. Fortunately his peripheral vision sucks. “A Hezbollah museum, huh? Can you imagine the gift shop?”

Bill and Bev exchange a look. “Remind me to show you the f-fuh-flag I got,” says Bill wryly.

Even out of the shitty corner of his eye, Richie sees movement on Eddie’s face that must be his eyebrows shooting into his hair. “You bought a Hezbollah _flag_?”

“I still say there’s no way that’ll get past Customs,” says Stan, sipping his juice.

“Here’s h-hoping.”

“So, to sum up, you’d recommend Lebanon,” says Mike with a laugh.

“One thousand percent yes,” replies Bev without hesitation. “Everyone should go. Beirut was like being in Europe or something compared to here.”

“_I love Beirut every moment_,” Richie sings softly, chomping another French fry, “_every moment of the year_.”

“Anyway, I heard _you_ guys had quite the adventure in Syria,” says Bev, leaning on her elbows and looking around at all of them. “Tell us all about it.”

Richie, Eddie, and the others fill Bill and Bev in on their Syria trip. Mainly, they gush about Damascus and Palmyra before arriving at the exciting part where they nearly completely fucked themselves over. After Mike, Ben, and Stan tell their versions of the story, and Richie finishes embellishing theirs wildly so Eddie can roll his eyes and huffily correct him (_“So we were stuck there for nine hours—” “It was more like six or seven.” “—for fifteen hours! Twenty hours!”_), Bev raises an eyebrow at Richie.

“So the two of you were alone in the hotel room for almost seven hours? What did you get up to?” Her voice is neutral but still it sets Richie sweating around his collar, his pits, the inside of the elbow that’s lightly pressed against Eddie’s because that’s how they ended up and it would be weirder to jerk away, right? It’s not weird that they’re still touching, it would be weirder _not _to touch, they touch all the time, there’s nothing _weird_—

Richie lifts his arm to adjust the beanie on his head, breaking contact. “Well, we didn’t stay in the hotel room the _whole_ time,” he says, settling in his chair in a way that maximizes space between him and Eddie. “We went out and ate lunch in the ruins.”

“Lunch in the ruins?” echoes Bev, waggling her eyebrows. “How romantic.”

Richie lets out a high-pitched giggle and chokes it off with a too-big bite of his sandwich stuffed between his teeth. Might as well give his mouth something to do other than talk.

“We took a bunch of dumb pictures on Richie’s camera,” Eddie drawls, waving his hand in vague dismissal. “He’ll probably post them at some point.”

“And Eds’ll probably untag himself at some point.”

Eddie flips him off. Richie sticks out his tongue. Eddie flips him off with his other hand, too. Richie lets his eyes squeeze shut as he laughs so he doesn’t have to think about how Eddie’s so close he can see how he nicked himself shaving that morning, doesn’t have to think about how he heard once that animals lick wounds because saliva helps blood clot, about how he wouldn’t mind licking Eddie’s chin, his jaw, his throat—

He ducks his head down and forces himself to stare at his food.

The talk of the ruins of Palmyra gets Bev and Bill talking about some of the archaeological sites they saw in Lebanon, because what is a trip to a Middle Eastern country without endless craggy expanses of lost cities. Richie lends half an ear while he idly chews on his _sujuq_. He nearly jumps when Eddie dumps a plastic spoonful of pickles into the small divot in Richie’s container of food. They join the ones that came with Richie’s meal, vinegar-soaked radishes and eggplant, bright red and pink.

“I don’t want them,” Eddie says quietly. “You like them right?”

Richie swallows hard. Nods. “You want, like, some fries?” he asks, hoarse.

“Sure.” Eddie takes a couple easily, seemingly unaware how Richie has begun doing his best impression of a statue.

As he does so, Richie notices Stan leaning forward in his seat and latches onto this, this something else, and he listens closely as Stan quietly asks Mike, across the table from him, “Do you like it, _shish tawouq_?”

Mike freezes, and Richie feels suddenly like he’s looking in a mirror. “Excuse me?”

Stan gestures to his plate. “The _shish tawouq_. Do you like it?”

“O-oh,” Mike stammers, looking down. “Yeah, it’s good. I didn’t know that’s what it was called.”

Stan frowns. “What did you think I said?”

Mike shifts a little and then laughs, “I thought you were calling me, like, a pet name or something.”

“Oh,” says Stan, and now _he’s _shifting uncomfortably in his seat, too, and isn’t that interesting? Way more interesting than how Eddie just gave him his pickles and took some fries like they’ve been dating for three years. “No, it’s just the name of the food...”

Unable to help himself, Richie snickers and leans over to coo, “How do you like the food, _shish tawouq_? Can I feed it to you, _shish tawouq_?”

“Can I have your pickles, _shish tawouq_?” Stan retorts, his tone barbed.

“_Bet_ you’d like a pickle. Bet you’d like my whole sausage, _shish tawouq_.”

Eddie rolls his eyes and makes an exasperated noise in his throat, while Mike laughs far too loudly and stuffs another bite of the grilled chicken—the actual _shish tawouq_—into his mouth.

When they finish eating, they gather up their containers to toss them. Richie lingers behind with Bev, trying not to let his brain track Eddie’s movement—from the trashcan back to his chair, stuffing his wallet in his pocket, sliding his jacket over his arms—and instead focuses on her, on how happy he is to see her again and how he wants so badly to sling an arm around her. He’s struck suddenly by how isolated she must feel, unable to casually touch or be touched by any of them in public. It’s a far cry from how he usually treats his close friends. Hell, he’s rarely totally vertical when he and Carla are hanging out, legs stretched out on the couch over her legs, or his head in her lap while they watch TV and she braids his hair so that it sticks straight up. He hopes fiercely that he and Bev will see each other in the States. Vegas isn’t so far from Orange County, after all.

Outside the restaurant, Richie lights up and passes the lighter back to Bev, puffing out smoke while he watches the rest of their group, up ahead. Eddie’s hands are in his pockets so the elastic hem of his jacket is tight around his lower back, accentuating his slim hips as he strides beside Bill. Richie gives a silent thanks to whoever’s listening that Eddie’s not a skinny jeans sort of guy.

He wrenches his eyes back to Bev and slaps on a grin. “Lebanon sounds like a fuckin’ blast.”

“It really was,” she sighs. She begins to flick her lighter on and off again, almost compulsively. “It’s hard to be back, actually.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Yeah? That good? So how much crazy-ass sex did you guys have? I don’t want all the gory details. Only like, eighty percent of the gory details.”

Bev chuckles as she brings the flame to the tip of her cigarette, carefully sucking in air and breathing out smoke. She doesn’t answer, only takes the cigarette from her lips and taps it delicately with her thumb. She looks up at Richie, smiling lopsidedly. “Actually, any interest in dinner tonight? I’ll tell you all about it.”

He pulls his head back in surprise. “Well, I’m not used to a lady being so forward, but—”

“I’m not paying for you,” she says bluntly.

“Duly noted.” He grins. “Hell yeah, I can swing a dinner. Just tell me where you want me, _ukhti_, and I’ll be there.”

***

On Ben’s suggestion, Richie and Bev choose a café on Wakalat called Aroma that specializes in juice and hookah, something that Richie realizes he has not properly taken advantage of, being in the Middle East. They get a late start on it because Dr. Musa, who teaches the Arab-Israeli Relations class that all seven of them have together, likes to ramble. When he finishes, and Bev and Richie leap up right away, their eyes on each other, Richie pretends not to notice how Eddie is watching them as he closes his own laptop and carefully winds the charging cable.

It’s chilly outside, the purple sky dusky and cool around them as evening falls. Nevertheless they choose a seat on the patio, under a heat lamp. The light is fading but they can still see people milling about on the red brick walking district, sitting on planters to smoke and chat. They order some food and a watermelon-and-mint-flavored hookah. When the waiter brings it out, Richie offers Bev the first drag on the end of the pipe with a solicitous incline of his head. She inhales deeply, both of them listening to the water bubbling in the base.

“So tell me how Lebanon really was,” he says. “Did Big Bill live up to his name?”

To his surprise, Bev only gives a quiet, rueful smile. She looks out at the street as she lets out the smoke. “Lebanon was great…” she says carefully, “but I don’t think Bill’s head is in the right place right now.”

“What do you mean? You guys didn’t fuck even _once_?”

She looks at him sideways, unamused. “Richie.”

He lifts his hands defensively. “Okay, okay,” he says lightly. “Not that kinda conversation. I get it. I’ll stuff the Trashmouth away.”

She frowns and passes the mouthpiece over to him. “Trashmouth?”

“Oh, that’s right, you weren’t there. Ask Ben about it some other time; right now we’re talking about you.” He sucks on the mouthpiece a little and tastes cool fruitiness. It’s nice. “Tell me more about Bill.”

She sighs, purses her lips. “How much do you know about his brother?”

He blinks, surprised. “You mean, like, Nabeel and Hamza? Or his actual brother?”

She chuckles, blowing out smoke in short bursts. “I guess that answers my question. His actual brother.”

“I didn’t even know Bill had a brother,” Richie says, frowning. “Well, I guess maybe he’s mentioned him a couple times. Jamie?”

“George. Georgie.”

“God, I’m a shit roommate,” he says guiltily, bringing the mouthpiece back to his lips. He lives with this guy and he knows almost nothing about him. “What’s up with his brother?”

“He was in a bad accident in the fall,” says Bev quietly. “It’s why Bill was trying to save up to go home. Before the accident, he’d been planning to stay in Jordan the whole year through, but then Georgie was biking home at night and got hit by a drunk driver. He was in the hospital for weeks.”

Richie’s face twists in horror. “Jesus Christ. Is he all right now?”

“I’m not sure, honestly,” Bev breathes. “Physically, maybe, although they thought for a while that he might lose his arm. I don’t know all the details. But Bill seems not to think he’s okay. They were close, and I think Bill blames himself for not being there.”

“Wow,” Richie says, awash with guilt for not knowing. “I had no idea.”

“It’s not your fault. I don’t think Bill’s really talked about it with anyone,” says Bev, shrugging one shoulder, “except me. And Stan.”

Richie takes one more hit and passes the hookah back to her, letting smoke stream out through his lips. “Do you think I should say something?”

Bev huffs out a laugh. “Honestly, I told you so you _wouldn’t _say something.”

“That’s fair,” Richie chuckles, bobbing his head.

“I think just be your normal self. Fun. Distracting.” Bev smiles at him. “He likes you, he said he’s glad you’re his roommate.”

“Ah, now you’re really spilling his secrets, _ukhti_.”

“Yeah, shoulda taken that one to the grave.” Bev sticks her tongue out at him, and he does the same in return. She leans back in her seat, sucking on the hookah. “Anyway, it was a great trip, but… I couldn’t help feeling like I shouldn’t be there with Bill.”

Richie raises an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“Yeah. Nothing against Bill, he’s a wonderful person and honestly, I think we’ll always be close. But he’s just not in a place where he can be there for a romantic partner. And even if he was, I think we’re better as friends than as a couple.”

“So, when you say that Bill wasn’t the person you were meant to be there with…” He trails off and regards her. She looks back at him unflinchingly, something in her eyes daring him to go on. “You got someone else in mind, _ukhti_?”

“Yeah,” she says sappily, making her eyes big and limpid. “You.”

They stare at each other a moment before cracking up.

“Right, you won’t travel with Bill because you prefer him as a friend than a fuck buddy, but _me_—”

“I’ve been playing the long game, _akhi_, I thought it was time to finally take my shot. Since I know you’re not hung up on anyone else or anything.”

“Me? Hung up? Pffft,” Richie raspberries his lips. “I may be hung but not _up_, if you know what I’m sayin’—”

“Bet you use that line on all the ladies,” laughs Bev. Then her eyes flick to the street and she nods, “Oh, and speak of the Devil…”

Richie lifts his head to look in the direction Bev nods. Eddie is walking purposefully down the Wakalat promenade, hands gripping the straps of his backpack like the dweeb he is. It makes Richie’s heart swell uncomfortably. Probably the tobacco.

“Well, wouldja look who it is.” Richie impulsively cups a hand around his mouth and calls, “_Rah-rah-ah-ah-ahh_.”

After a second, Eddie’s head jerks up. He looks around uncertainly for a few seconds before Bev’s laughter alerts him to their presence. He gives a sheepish wave and walks over, one hand still clutching his backpack strap. “Roma-roma-maa,” he says drily.

Richie leans one arm over the railing of the fence beside them. “Excuse me, my good chap. How many farthings for one bad romance? Because I dah-say I find yours quite intriguing!”

Eddie rolls his eyes. “Shut up, Richie, you know I hate the British Guy. The British Guy is the worst.”

Richie sputters, blinking dramatically as though slapped. “The wahst? Well, I’ll remembah you said that, young man, when the Empire rises again!”

“Chahming,” Bev says with a smile, resting her chin sweetly on her folded hands. “How’re you doing, Eddie? You going home? You and Ben live around here, right?”

“I was gonna go to Starbucks to do homework and then go to the gym.”

“Well, hey, if all you’ve got going on is finding a place to do homework, why don’t you join us until gym time?” Richie offers, gesturing to an empty chair. “We got plenty of space. Bevvie and I are just shootin’ the shit, talking about Lebanon and Syria.”

Eddie chews his lip for a second before nodding. “Yeah, all right.” He disappears around the side of the building to enter in the front. Richie watches him for a second before remembering he’s not letting himself do that. He rips his gaze away and focuses instead on readjusting the coals on top of the foil. He pretends to be deeply invested in getting them situated just right as Bev leans in towards him.

“Real quick,” she says, slightly hushed, “nothing happened between you two in Syria, right?”

Richie laughs. “Define ‘happened.’ Oh, and define ‘nothing,’ too, while you’re at it.”

Bev frowns at him, but the next moment Eddie appears next to her, and then they all scuffle the chairs and bags and backpacks around until Eddie has room to join them comfortably. He pulls out his Arabic book and a pencil.

“So you’re talking about Lebanon?” Eddie asks, looking between Bev and Richie. Richie is still very focused on the hookah. It really needs his full attention. “Did you and Bill have a good time?”

“Yeah, I was just telling Richie. It was nice, but… you know about Georgie?”

“Oh, Bill’s little brother? Wasn’t he in an accident or something?”

Richie throws his hands in the air in exasperation. “How does everyone know about my roommate’s little brother’s accident except for me?”

“It’s called Facebook, dumbass.”

“Well, I don’t make a habit of stalking all my friends’ Facebook pages.”

“Right, you only check to make sure they’re all still tagged in whatever lame pictures you post.”

“Well, Ah say! If that’s how you feel, young sirrah, perhaps this time Ah shan’t publicize the daguerreotypes! So as to avoid giving such a brash young upstaht the satisfaction of untagging himself!”

“Doesn’t even make sense. Is the British Guy a fucking time traveler now??”

“He sounds more like Teddy Roosevelt to me, honestly,” says Bev.

“Ah do believe Ah have become unstuck in time, yes!”

“God,” laughs Bev, rolling her eyes as she reaches for the hookah hose, “I thought traveling together mighta helped you guys learn to communicate a little better. Guess I was wrong.”

“Talk to him about it,” says Eddie, just as Richie says, “It’s all Eddie’s fault.” Eddie glares at him, and Richie lets himself smile back, smoke trailing out his mouth. Eddie watches it pass out Richie’s lips with something like horror before he looks down at his textbook and starts scribbling.

“Oh my god, I’m having flashbacks,” groans Bev. “What day is it? It’s not January anymore, right? Oh _fuck_, that reminds me!” She leans forward and waves the mouthpiece in Richie’s face threateningly. “You’ve been keeping secrets, Richard.”

Richie rips it from her hand. “You’re scaring me, _ukhti_.”

“You _should_ be scared. I’m so angry you didn’t tell me it’s your birthday next week!”

Richie lets his head fall back on his neck, smoke streaming from his mouth into the sky. “Ugh, you caught me.”

Eddie looks up from the Arabic homework that Richie really should be doing, too. “It’s your birthday next week?”

“Yeahhh…”

Bev tilts her head at him. Eddie puts down his pencil and frowns.

“What’s with the sigh, _akhi_?”

“Yeah, Richie, what the fuck? Why don’t you want people to know it’s your birthday?”

“It’s not that I don’t _want _people to know. I just don’t want people to make a big deal out of it.”

“Why not?” Bev and Eddie ask in near unison.

Richie grins. “Fuck, I oughta jinx you.”

“It’d make for a very boring dinner,” says Bev, holding out a hand for the hookah.

Richie sighs and passes it back to her. “Well, I dunno. A couple reasons, I guess. First of all, there’s not a whole lot we can do in Jordan. Like, if we were back in the States, I’d invite all you guys to my apartment and we could drink and smoke and play games and shit.”

“We could still go out to bars,” says Eddie, “like we did for Bev’s birthday.”

“We could,” Richie allows with a shrug, “and that’s fine, but it’s not the same. We’d have to go early, make sure we don’t get too drunk so we can make it back to our host parents in time for curfew. I really just wanna let loose for my birthday, chill out and party into the night with you guys, and we can’t really do that here. Not since we were at the Geneva, anyway.”

Bev hums and purses her lips sympathetically. “Something’s better than nothing, though, don’t you think?”

“Sure, yeah. I’d like to do _something_. I guess. I dunno.” He pauses, thinking. “I mean, my mom’s gonna be in town, too, so—”

Bev snorts. “What the fuck? Your _mom’s _gonna be in town?”

“Yeah, she gets in on… Wednesday? Thursday? I have to check.”

“What the hell, Richie?”

“You say that like she’s just driving down for the weekend or something, not flying halfway across the globe.”

Richie laughs. “Yeah, she’s becoming a real jetsetter in her old age. She jumps around with a couple of friends, since my dad doesn’t like to travel. She decided they oughta take advantage of me being out here to see the sights. Petra, Jerusalem. Et ceteraaa…” He enunciates each T and drags out the final _ahh_ before closing his mouth around the end of the pipe and sucking in the flavor.

“I am so curious to meet Mrs. Tozier,” Bev says, waggling her eyebrows and grinning.

“She’ll probably want to meet everyone. She’s already asking me about people from Facebook.”

“Your mom has a Facebook?” Eddie asks, raising an eyebrow.

“Yes, to my eternal horror. But she mostly uses it to post pictures of our dog at the beach, or pictures of me as a baby on my birthday or Mother’s Day, so I guess it could be worse.”

“Oh my god, I must friend her,” says Bev. “I’m going to search for her as soon as I get home tonight.”

“Look for Maggie T. Her profile picture is of Snoopy. She fuckin’ loves Snoopy for some reason.”

Bev giggles, taking the pipe from Richie. “Isn’t that so funny, how women our parents’ ages, like, love those old cartoon characters? My aunt loves Miss Piggy. Does your mom have a character she loves, too, Eddie?”

“Yeah. Reagan.”

Richie and Bev both crack up, Bev’s nostrils puffing like a smokestack. Eddie gives a satisfied smile as they laugh and taps his pencil on his open textbook.

“Hey, wait,” says Bev suddenly, snapping her fingers. “Birthday brainstorm.”

Richie raises an eyebrow. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Bev’s eyes are sparkling with ingenuity. “What do you think your mom would say to getting you your own hotel room? As a birthday present?”

Richie blinks and sits back in his chair, bouncing the stiff end of the hookah against his palm. “I mean…” he tails off, thinking. It would make sense, since she’ll be staying at a hotel anyway. Spending a night away from the house to be with his mother is something that’s easily enough explained to Mama and Baba. And his mom _has _been pestering him about what he wants for his birthday…

_Twenty-one is a big year, Richie! I mean, maybe not for _you, _considering that time you tried to hide the fact you drank my vodka by replacing it with water and it froze solid, but… _

He grins. “Bevvie, you may have fucking cracked the code. I’m gonna email her tonight.”

Bev grins back. “I’ll fucking be there. And I bet everyone else will, too.” She nudges Eddie with an elbow. “Whaddaya say, Eds?”

Eddie scowls. “I say I’m pissed that’s catching on,” he grumbles. His eyes flick to Richie’s and catch there, sticking like honey. “But I’ll be there, too.”

***

They hang out for a few hours, until the sun goes down entirely and al-Wakalat Street is covered in darkness. After they ask for the check, Bev ducks away to go to the bathroom, and Eddie starts sliding his books into his backpack.

“How was the homework?” Richie asks, nudging at the coals on top of their hookah, knowing they’re spent. “Think I could bullshit my way through it?”

Eddie rolls his eyes. “I think you could bullshit your way through anything at this point, Trashmouth.”

Richie laughs. “Talk about not wanting something to catch on.”

“I’ll stop calling you Trashmouth if you stop calling me Eds.”

“Not a chance,” Richie says with a grin, sitting back in his chair. “Besides, you love it when I call you Eds.”

“Fuck you, I do not.”

“Sure you do. It gives you something to be angry about. And you clearly love being angry.”

Eddie scoffs. “I do not _love _being _angry_.”

“So then why do you do it so much?” Richie asks cheekily.

Eddie rolls his eyes and says, “Guess you just bring it out of me,” as he zips his backpack. He stands and hoists it onto his shoulder, pushing in his chair.

Richie lifts his hands to fold them over the back of his head, his elbows winging out as he looks up at him. He feels comfortable under Eddie’s casual resentment. “Nice to see you tonight, Eds,” he says calmly. “Feels like ages since we hung out without being stranded in a country hostile to the U.S.”

Eddie snorts and smiles. “Yeah, you’re right. You wanna get a drink sometime?”

Richie freezes, his nerves suddenly singing. So much for being fucking comfortable. “Uhh, Ah…” he sputters, his smile congealed on his face. “Well, Ah do declah… it is quite an interesting proposishun…”

Eddie frowns at him. “I mean, you said you wanted to, just the two of us. Like in _Friends_, remember?”

Thin relief trickles through him. “Oh, _yeah_!” he laughs, probably too loudly. He’s suddenly aware that his arms are still in the air, and he lowers them quickly. He fidgets with the empty straw wrapper, nodding incessantly. “Yeah, sure! I’ll be the Phoebe to your Joey. When were ya thinkin’?”

“Tomorrow works for me.”

“T-tomorrow?” Richie squeaks. He clears his throat when Eddie raises an eyebrow. “Works for me, as well. Yes.”

“Cool,” says Eddie, adjusting his backpack. “Guess I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

“Yeah,” and Richie’s voice is still slightly squeaky. He coughs again and waves as Eddie turns to go. “Try not to dream of me tonight, Eds.”

Eddie frowns, red-faced, and flips him off over his shoulder as he leaves the restaurant. This time, Richie can’t help but watch him go.

***

**richie: **carla ur proabbly still not theree and i dont think u saw my last messasges but jfc carla things are getting WEIRD  
so a few weeks ago it was bevs birthady and we all went out for dirnks and while we were there eddie told me that hed been watching firends and he said we should do that thing tha tphoebe and joey do where they go out for dinner or drinks or whatever regularly just the two of them to talka bout the other friends  
and i said yes bc  
BC OBVIUOSLY I WANT TO SPEND TIME WITH HIM JESUS  
but i tottally forgot about ti and then totday he comes up to me and is like, “hey so when do u wanna do our first drinks jstu the two of us? i think tmoororw would be good”  
and so NOW IM GTETTING DIRNKS WITH JSUT EDIDIE TOMRROW NGIHT CARLA  
WHAT DO I DO CARLA?????  
IS THIS A DATE CARALA???????????????  
its problby not a date, right??? its not he didnt say it was a date and  
HES STRIAIGHT IM LIKE 71% SURE  
AND HE HAS A GF CARLA   
A  
G  
F  
carla pls advise im diyng here wtf do i do

**richie:** hey its monday morning idk where uve been but pls just tell me is it a date  
its not a date is it?  
i dont think its a date  
is it?

***

Richie very purposely does not dress nicely on Monday. He wears a ratty old Oingo Boingo t-shirt from early high school under his flamingo-patterned button-down that does _not _go, because he knows Eddie hates it and he’s hoping he’ll make fun of him. He’s really banking on the idea that if Eddie makes fun of him, everything will feel normal. Even though he’s only about ninety-five percent sure this isn’t a date.

Ninety…-two percent sure.

He’s thinking in percentages a lot lately. Something about it makes him feel a little less unhinged. It lets him take a step back and quantify how sure he is, and then he can think to himself, _Oh, so that’s an A amount sure that this isn’t a date. I’d get a C- on the test of how sure I am that Eddie is straight._

He had to keep it secret from his fellow theater kids, but Richie actually often found math relaxing, albeit boring, in high school. The nice thing about math is that there’s always a correct answer, as long as you know how to get there.

Although it’s not so relaxing when the percentages are only going down.

Monday is a natural day to choose to go on this not-date, this friend date (this _Friends _date), mainly because they don’t have Madrasati the next morning. It’s like a mini-weekend, almost. But Monday is also the day that Richie doesn’t have a class in the afternoon. Eddie suggested they go to an English pub-themed bar called the Queen Vic near the AmmanAbroad offices, to save on cab fare, so Richie is just… hanging around the office. Awkward. Anxious. His leg bouncing beneath his laptop is making the couch shake so hard that even Mike gets up to move.

Eventually the class lets out, and Eddie finds Richie in the study abroad lounge. Somewhat cagily, looking around at the rest of the Losers as though they’re going to horn in on their solo (_date_) get-together, Eddie jerks his head towards the door and asks, “You ready?”

Richie lifts his chin and grins, ignoring Bev and Stan’s curious eyes on him. “_Aywa_,” he answers, trying for _casual_ and only achieving _strained_.

The Queen Vic is uphill from the offices, even farther uphill than Wakalat Street. There’s a steep incline just before they get to it, so Richie’s huffing and puffing by the time they arrive. The bar is in the basement, beyond a padded door, and decked out, as promised, like an English pub, decorated with dark wood wainscoting and signed albums of English recording artists. Soccer plays on the many TVs throughout. Richie calls over the bar for two drafts of Heineken, drops some JD on the counter, and then they slide into a small booth in the corner, all mahogany wood and deep red upholstery, near a signed poster of Sean Connery as 007.

Richie sighs, rubs his hands over his legs, and looks across at Eddie. “Well?”

Eddie raises an eyebrow. He doesn’t look nearly as nervous as Richie feels. Or, Richie would feel better making that call if his eyes didn’t keep sliding off Eddie like he’s slippery and covered in baby oil—oh _fuck_ Eddie covered in baby oil—

“Well what?” Eddie asks.

Richie shakes himself and raises his pint glass. “Cheers, right? Or whatever ‘cheers’ is in Arabic. _Sahha_? Most languages it’s ‘health,’ right?”

“That’s what you say when someone sneezes.”

Richie grins and clinks his glass against Eddie’s, almost too hard. “Well, _sahha_.”

“_‘Ala ’albak_,” Eddie replies wryly, by rote. They both drink.

Richie sets his glass down with a satisfying thunk. There are no coasters, but the table is shiny and well-lacquered. No rings. He can see the shadow of Eddie’s reflection in it, upside down. “So,” he barks at it, practically from his chest, grasping for the one conversation topic he knows will make this feel like less of a date. “Got some time away from the missus, eh?” He looks up and bares his teeth in a way that he hopes comes off as chill.

Eddie squints as he swallows his beer. “Excuse me?”

“Normally at this time you’d be catching up with the love of your life, right? Myra?”

“Oh.”

“I’m just flattered you made time for li’l old me.” Richie bats his eyelashes at him.

Eddie ignores him, only drums his fingers on the glass. “Yeah, I’m actually… trying to get a little more time for myself.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I mean.” He huffs a little, lifting his shoulders and letting them fall. “Class lasts from eight in the morning until four in the afternoon, we have so much homework all the time… Having to talk to her for a couple hours every night on top of that… I just don’t feel like I’m taking full advantage of being here, I guess.” He takes a compulsive sip of his drink, looking up at Connery.

“Makes sense,” says Richie. He tries hard not to wonder what that means about Eddie and Myra’s relationship. What that means for Eddie and _Richie’s _relationship. He lifts the glass back to his lips. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think I could ever do what you’re doing.”

Eddie looks sideways at him. “You mean the homework?”

Richie nearly chokes on his beer. He smacks the table with a hand and turns his face sideways, screwing up his lips to avoid spraying all over Eddie. He just barely keeps it in his mouth. When he recovers, he swallows and says, “That’s _not _what I meant, but thank you for the deadpan humor, Eds. This is why we’re friends.”

Eddie gives him a satisfied smile as he takes a gulp of his drink.

“No, I meant,” Richie goes on, “the long-distance thing. That’s so hard.”

Eddie shrugs noncommittally, looking away. “I mean, it’s not that bad.”

Richie raises an eyebrow. “Really? I feel like I would go crazy not being able to touch the other person.”

“You’re just a perv.”

“I mean, _yes_,” Richie says, “but it’s more than that. It’s different in real life. You’re part of each other’s lives. Only being able to see each other through Skype… I don’t know. It seems like it would be easy to grow apart, to forget what it’s like to be together, if you don’t see them in person every day.”

“You’ve never been in a long-distance relationship? Not even temporarily, like over the summer?”

Richie shakes his head. “Like I said, I know how I would be. I would go crazy. Besides, I don’t really date a lot of people in the first place.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, really.” Richie cocks an eyebrow. “Why, do I seem like the type?”

Eddie shrugs. “I dunno. I guess I just assumed.”

“That because I’m bi, I’m a slut?”

“I assumed you were a slut way before I knew you were bi.”

Richie throws his head back and laughs hard. “Whew, Eds gets off a good one!” he hoots, slapping a hand on the table in delight. “All right, well, maybe in comparison to you, Mr. Only-Been-With-One-Person, but no, it’s not like I’ve had a long series of relationships.”

“How many?”

Richie screws up his face, thinking hard. “Two?”

Eddie looks down at his drink, clutched between two hands. “Huh.”

“Oh, technically three, if you count a three-week ‘relationship’ in high school, but yeah.” Richie shrugs. “And honestly, they were all such disasters, it’s kind of a relief it’s only been so few. The last one in particular was a doo-hoo-_hoo_-zee.”

Eddie tilts his head. “Yeah? What happened?”

“Ohh, no. I’m not nearly drunk enough for that, my friend. You’d have to drain your bank account to get me that liquored up.”

Eddie gives Richie a petulant look and takes a sip of beer. Richie does, too, beginning to feel antsy under the scrutiny. His knees are starting to jump under the table.

“Anyway,” he goes on brusquely, as though it’s no big deal to rehash his disastrous dating history in front of the person he’s wishing hard could be next, “suffice it to say that I wanted to take a long break from the dating world after that. Oh, hey—” he snaps his fingers, a lightbulb going off “—this is appropriate, considering we’re only out here tonight because of _Friends_. Maybe you’ll actually get a reference for once.” Richie leans over his forearms, crossed on the table, and Eddie reluctantly angles himself in, too. Richie lifts his eyebrows, and stage-whispers: “I achieved Phase Three.”

Eddie frowns. “What’s Phase Three?”

“Where I don’t want to have a relationship ever, I just want to have sex with strippers and my friends,” Richie quotes. He laughs and falls back against the cushion of the booth.

After a second, Eddie laughs, too, a little uncertainly.

Richie grins. “Chandler says that.”

“Oh.” Eddie takes a long sip of his drink. He’s frowning, clearly thinking deeply.

Richie watches him process in amusement. “Don’t worry, Eds, I don’t actually have sex with strippers.”

“I know that!”

“Just escorts.”

“Shut the fuck up, Richie!”

Richie lets out a self-satisfied guffaw and drains his beer. He gathers his empty glass and scoots down the bench, gesturing to Eddie’s quarter-full pint. “Want another? I got this round.”

“Oh.” Eddie blinks down at his glass like he’s surprised to see how much he’s drained and then back up to Richie. “Uh, sure. That’d be great.”

With a wink, Richie shoots a finger gun Eddie’s way before making his way up to the bar. He pays for two more Heineken drafts, and the bartender passes them to him brimming and over-full, so he has to tread carefully on his way back to their booth. He slides Eddie’s over to him painstakingly slowly before sitting down with his own.

“_Shukran_,” says Eddie.

“Don’t mention it. _Sahha_.”

_“‘Ala ’albak_.”

They drink.

Eddie sets down his beer and fixes Richie with what comes off as an intimidatingly purposeful gaze. Richie nearly quails in the face of it. It feels like yet more prodding questions are coming his way. It’s like he’s being interviewed or something.

“So… I’ve been wondering,” Eddie says slowly, “how did you know you were bi?”

“How did you know you were straight?” Richie shoots back reflexively. Immediately he feels a sense of dread prickling up his spine, especially when Eddie flinches, his eyebrows shooting nearly into his hair. Holding out a placating hand, Richie rushes to speak: “No, sorry, never mind. That’s my standard response because it’s like… I dunno, straight people never have to answer that question, right? But you—”

Eddie shakes his head, holding up a hand himself. “No, I’m sorry, I didn’t think, you’re right, you—”

“—weren’t asking to be a dick or anything, you just—”

“—don’t have to tell me, it’s none of my—”

“—wanted to know…”

“—business…”

They fall into uncomfortable silence. Richie stuffs his nose in his beer, drinking deeply. After a second, Eddie does the same.

The truth is, Richie always hates this question, even more so when it’s coming from someone he would use as an example for anyone else. _Well, the moment I laid eyes on you, Eds, I had my entire sexuality confirmed all over again. Couldn’t you tell by how frantic I was to make an ass out of myself in front of you? _He hopes Eddie doesn’t ask again. There’s no way to have this conversation that doesn’t involve Richie wanting to throw up about eight layers of Voices and jokes. He can’t tell if it’s condensation from the pint of beer or if his palms are sweating; either way, he drags his hands against his thigh, desperate to dry them.

“I guess I never thought about it.”

Richie jerks his head up. Eddie is frowning down at his beer, tapping his fingers along the pint glass. “Huh?”

“Being straight,” says Eddie. “I never thought about it. I guess I just assumed.”

Richie’s knee starts bouncing for real now. “Oh. Yeah. Well, it’s the ‘default’,” he says, using air quotes, “or whatever, so.”

“But you’re right,” Eddie says, frowning even harder. He looks like his eyebrows are trying to break through the little wrinkle of skin between them to finally join as one. “It’s weird that no one thinks about it. The moment they _knew_ they were straight.”

Richie swallows hard. “Yeah,” he says, picking up his own beer. “Y’oughta take a sociology class when you go back to school, Eds. It’ll be one mindfuck after another.”

“We’re in school.”

Richie rolls his eyes. “I mean _real _school.”

Eddie lets out a deeply frustrated noise, crackling in his throat as he finally looks back up at Richie. “Just because you don’t do the homework—” and he gestures so hard he jostles his glass, spilling a small puddle of beer onto the tabletop. He jumps back from the table, trying to avoid it dripping onto his lap. “Oh _fuck_—”

Richie chokes on a laugh, setting his own glass down with a clatter. “Party foul! Soldier down!”

“What the fuck, Richie, I need a fucking napkin—”

“No napkins, Eds, you’re a man!” Richie crows. He claps with every word: “Zam—boni— that— shit!”

Eddie glares at him. “What the fuck does that mean?”

“You gotta suck it up, Eds! Like—” Richie makes an O out of his lips and sucks in air so hard it whistles. “Like a Zamboni machine at a skating rink.”

Eddie screws his mouth up tight and then laughter bursts forth from it, his eyes crinkling up. “That’s disgusting, Richie,” he laughs, covering his mouth with the back of his hand. “There’s no fucking way I’m doing that.”

“Then move aside, Eds, that’s good beer!”

“Richie, no, you moron!”

Richie makes a big show of trying to lean across the table, Hoovering the air with his mouth as though he’s just waiting to suck up the spilled beer, while Eddie, laughing, shoves him back down into his seat.

“You’re making such a fucking scene, Jesus!” Eddie stifles his laughter as he pulls some tissue out of the box at the end of the table—for some reason it’s always Fine-brand tissues in Jordan and not proper napkins—and pointedly mops up the spilled beer.

“Well, don’t make a habit of spilling and I won’t have to,” Richie laughs. When Eddie glares at him, he sticks out his tongue.

“You’re the worst,” Eddie grumbles, but it sounds so fond it makes Richie shiver.

After Eddie gets the spilled beer soaked up, and after Richie makes a joke about wringing the tissue paper out into his open mouth like a baby bird, and after Eddie beans the wet, wadded-up tissue nearly straight down Richie’s gullet— after all that, Richie clears his throat and says, “All right, now I think you’ve asked me enough questions.” He braces his elbows on the table and steeples his fingers before his face, in his best impression of an employer interviewing a potential hire. “Let’s talk about you.”

“I’ve already told you a lot about me.”

“I meant about your love life, Eds. Not your childhood trauma and shit.”

Eddie scowls at him. “Fuck you, dude. See if I confide in you ever again.”

Richie grits all his teeth at him in a cheesy smile. “Come now, Edward. Now you know all about my dating preferences. And that my preference is not to date,” he jokes. “Tell me about yours.”

Eddie sighs and sits back. “Not a lot to tell. Myra and I got together in freshman year, the beginning of second semester. Like I said, we did a project together on bird flu. She suggested we get lunch at the café on campus and when I got there, she was dressed all nice and asked me a bunch of questions about my life. I realized it was a date maybe an hour and a half in.”

Richie tries desperately not to wonder if he is experiencing his own parallel to that right fucking now.

“Oh?” he asks innocently, his palms sweaty. “What gave it away?”

“She told me it was a date.”

Richie snorts. “Well, yeah, that’d be a clue.”

“A little bit,” Eddie says drily.

“Well, in that case, Eds, since you’re apparently bad at figuring out what’s a date and what’s not, I have to ask,” Richie says, and leans over the table with his hand cupped confidentially around his mouth. Eddie leans in, too, his face skeptical, and Richie whispers: “Is _this _a date?”

Eddie falls backwards, rolling his eyes hard. He grabs his glass with one hand and sticks his nose in it, his face beet red as he flips Richie off with the other. Richie cackles and reaches easily for his own.

“I mean,” he goes on relentlessly, “I _said _I achieved Phase Three, Eds, you don’t gotta wine me and dine me. I’m easy, I’ll take a handy under the—”

“Fancy seeing you here, Zuko.”

Richie jumps at the voice and looks up. Standing at the side of their table, holding three bottles of Amstel, is Sandy. She gives him a smile that’s so bright it tilts her head to the side, and Richie tries very hard to school his expression from one of shock into pleasant surprise.

“S-Sandy!” he exclaims, releasing his glass immediately to stand and give her an awkwardly hunched hug, bending across the table. She returns it with a warm pat on the back, followed by a circular rub, and he thinks hopefully that that seems to be a very _no hard feelings _hug. He pulls away and sits back down, smiling broadly and, he hopes, convincingly. He ignores how Eddie’s eyes have been shooting through them like nails the whole time. “_Kiifik_?”

“Oh, please, let’s not speak Arabic,” Sandy laughs with a dismissive wave. “Hi, Eddie, good to see you again.”

Eddie’s smile is slight and strained as he nods back to her. “You, too.”

Sandy seems not to pick up on Eddie’s tone. (It’s almost like not everybody is attuned to Eddie Kaspbrak’s every mood. Weird.) Instead, she sets down two of the Amstel bottles and slides them across to them with a smile. “These are for you guys.”

Richie raises both eyebrows, his grin spreading. “Oh yeah? What’s the occasion?”

She bobs her head back and forth, her smile turning a little bashful. “Well, I don’t know if this is awkward, but I’m actually on a date right now.” She jerks her thumb over her shoulder, and Richie and Eddie both crane their necks to see. Richie catches a glimpse of a lanky, bearded guy with black hair sitting at a two-person table, watching the soccer game with interest. “And I just wanted to say,” she goes on cheerfully, “no hard feelings about you kind of ghosting me. Or whatever is appropriate in this situation, I dunno. Honestly, it’s never happened before.” She laughs and shrugs one shoulder.

“Oh.” Richie blinks, surprised, his stomach twisting with discomfort. His Southern Gentleman Voice comes bubbling out from somewhere. “Well, that’s mahghty decent of ya, little lady...”

Sandy laughs pleasantly. “You are such a dork. Don’t get all awkward because I did a nice thing.”

“You ghosted her?” Eddie asks, smirking at Richie.

“There was a lot going on!” Richie exclaims defensively.

Eddie snorts. “You really _are_ bad at long distance. She’s even in the same city, you’re just not seeing her four days a week.”

“I’m— That’s not—” He huffs and turns imploringly to Sandy. “We got _stranded _in _Syria_.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Oh, so you would have texted me back if you hadn’t been stranded?” Richie opens her mouth, but Sandy jabs a finger at him sternly but smiling. “And _don’t _lie.” Richie closes his mouth. Sandy laughs, and Eddie rolls his eyes.

Richie hunches down in his seat sheepishly. “Sorry, I have the attention span of a goldfish.”

Sandy shrugs. “Kinda what I figured. Someone more interesting came along. Maybe someone you see every day…?” She gives Richie a smile that makes his stomach curdle in his gut.

Suddenly, Eddie shifts along the booth, making to shimmy out. “’Scuse me,” he says, a little gruffly. “Bathroom.”

“Oh, sure.”

“Don’t break the seal, Eds!” Richie calls. Eddie frowns at him over his shoulder as he makes his way to the restrooms. They both watch him go, and after a moment’s hesitation, Sandy perches lightly on the end of the booth, across from Richie.

“I’m not staying,” she explains. “It’s just more comfortable to sit.”

“Yeah, no worries.”

“Ugh, you’re so Cali,” she laughs. “Cowabunga, dude.”

“Don’t call it Cali, brah,” he shoots back with a laugh, taking a sip of his Heineken. “Anyway, you can stay if you want, I don’t mind. But you’re on a date, so.”

She widens her eyes teasingly. “And _you’re _on a date, so…”

He inhales his beer and coughs. He’s _got _to stop doing that. “Oh, uh, we’re not—”

“It’s okay,” she giggles. “I kinda figured you guys would get together. You clearly had a thing for each other—”

“—No, I mean we’re _not_…” He glances around before leaning in to whisper. “We’re not on a date. He has a girlfriend.”

Her eyebrows disappear under her blunt, shiny bangs. “_Still?_ After the kissing and you running after him down the street?”

He winces. “Don’t remind me. Still a touchy subject.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet,” she scoffs. “_Would_ be a touchy subject, seeing your crush making out with someone else.”

“He doesn’t—”

“Yeah, yeah.” Sandy waves a hand dismissively at him and takes a sip from her bottle.

Richie looks down at his, then back up at her. “Is that why you brought us these beers? Because you thought we were on a date?”

“Yes! I thought it would be nice! I’m trying to be nicer, just, like, in life.”

“Well, it _was_ nice,” Richie concedes. He glances back over at the guy she’s with, he’s still watching the game, but he seems to have one eye on Sandy. When he sees Richie looking, he gives him a head nod. Richie returns it jerkily.

“Very macho of you,” says Sandy.

“Thanks, I thought so,” he says, pleased with himself. “He seems nice, too. Where’d you meet him?”

“Actually, we met at Books@, after you ran off,” she says, with a wry grin. “Rayan hung out with us the rest of the night and asked for my number. I gave it to him, but I didn’t call right away because I was still into you.”

Richie scrunches his nose. “Yeah. Sorry, again.”

“Don’t worry about it. Honestly, I feel like we both ended up with the people we were supposed to that night.” She grins.

Richie half-smiles reluctantly back.

“Anyway, I’m gonna get back to _my _date,” she says, standing up. “Nice seeing you, Zook.”

“Yeah, you too,” Richie says. She gives him a smile and a little wave, which he returns, and goes back to her table. The guy, Rayan, lights up when he sees her coming back. Richie wonders if that’s how _he_ looks every time he sees Eddie. He knows that’s how he feels.

He doesn’t have long to wonder. Eddie reappears in Richie’s periphery and plops back down into the booth, scooting into the center. He downs what was left of his pint and shoves it to the side. Color is high in his cheeks, and his hair is slightly askew, falling forward into his face, like he ran his hands through it in the bathroom and couldn’t fix it to his liking. He fixes Richie with a determined, inscrutable stare.

Richie lifts his eyebrows expectantly and takes a more measured sip of his beer. “_Ahlan wa sahlan_.”

“So you _do_ have sex with your friends.”

Richie coughs so hard beer dribbles out his nose. “Uhh, fucking _‘afwan_, _habibi_?” he sputters, grabbing for the Fine tissues and stuffing his nose with them.

“You said in Phase Three you just have sex with strippers and your friends,” says Eddie, jabbing his hand through the air like he’s laying out the points of his argument, “but then you said you don’t have sex with strippers. So.” He cuts his hand through the air. “So that means… friends.”

Richie continues to cough and choke and blot at his nose with the tissues and uses the time to shoot glances at Eddie with a squinty eye. His expression is fucking impenetrable, giving away nothing but intensity. He’s leaning forward in his seat, his forearms braced on the edges of the table, both hands lightly grasping the bottle of Amstel, fingers idly spinning it against the lacquered, dark-grain wood. He’s watching Richie closely.

Richie looks away, eyes darting frantically. What the fuck does he even say to this?

“I mean,” he says, “yeah, I guess.”

Eddie blinks in surprise, as though he didn’t start this conversation in the first place. “Really?”

“Yeah…” says Richie, trying desperately to gather his wits about him, although it feels like they spurted out his nostrils with the beer. Which fucking _stings_, by the way. “Yeah. I’ve done like, friends with benefits stuff. It’s kind of my M.O., at this point, I guess. My friend Carla is a longstanding F with B, actually. Healthiest relationship I’ve ever had.” He gives Eddie a wry grin before he blows his nose loudly into the tissue and bunches it up. He leaves it on the table, where Eddie glares at it.

“Carla? Is that the Carla who tried to friend me on Facebook?”

Richie laughs, a little too hard. “Yeah! That’s her. She wanted to Facebook stalk everyone over here since I was talking about you guys so much.”

“Oh.”

“You should add her, you’d like her. She’s a fuckin’ laugh.”

Eddie takes a long gulp of his beer, looking deeply skeptical. “I thought friends with benefits was just, like, a thing people said to get in a girl’s pants.”

“Well, Carla’s the one who suggested it to me,” Richie chuckles. “And she was wildly successful at getting in the pants, so I guess maybe.”

“I just don’t really see the appeal,” Eddie plows onward, voice strangely loud. Or maybe that’s just how it sounds to Richie. “Doesn’t it make things awkward? Aren’t you worried about someone, like, developing feelings or wanting to date? Or one of you wanting to date someone else? Doesn’t that get weird?”

“I mean, that’s always a possibility, I guess,” says Richie with a shrug, “but Carla and I have been doing it for so long. And we have a pretty hard rule that as soon as one of us finds someone they’re interested in, we stop.” He shrugs again, peeling at the logo on the bottle. “And it’s not weird. We’re really good friends and care about each other a lot. She was there for me through all my breakups—”

“So why don’t you just _date_?”

Richie inhales long through his wet nose and leans his head back, mind reeling through thoughts. Why the _fuck _does he have to answer this? To his 87 percent (83 percent, 71 percent… 66 percent…) straight friend?

“Well, I guess maybe I woulda wanted to date her, back when we first became friends,” he says carefully, feeling itchy and jittery all over. “I always thought she was pretty. And fun. Like, so fun. And the more I got to know her, the more I liked her. But she wasn’t interested in dating at the time, so we were just friends. And then I switched schools and we hooked up at a party and…” He shrugs. “It was just easy, I guess. Not to do it with feelings.”

Eddie furrows his brow. “Wait, I thought you said you _did_ have feelings for her.”

“Maybe when we started, but I just ignored them and eventually they went away.”

Eddie stares at him for a long time, so long that Richie lets out a nervous laugh.

“What? They did! You tryna stare me down, Eds? I warn you, I have a mean stink-eye myself.”

“No, I’m not trying to—” Eddie huffs, exasperated. “I just don’t _get_ it. If you like the person that much, and you’re attracted to them, why wouldn’t you just date them?”

“I dunno how to explain it to you, man. It’s just easier. No expectations. No feelings. No one gets hurt. Everyone has sex. It’s a win-win.”

Eddie flattens his mouth, pressing his already thin lips together hard. He picks at the label on the bottle. Finally, he says, “Huh.”

“I can tell you’re unconvinced.”

“Yeah.” Then a self-satisfied look overtakes his face, as though he’s figured it out. He sits back, his nose in the air, and says haughtily, “Maybe I’m just not as obsessed with sex as you are.” He lifts the bottle to his lips, but Richie can tell it’s already empty with how sharply he has to raise the butt, chasing any drops, and wow, didn’t Eddie _just _start drinking that?

“Maybe you just haven’t had as good of sex as I have,” Richie replies easily, watching him.

Eddie only rolls his eyes. He makes an exasperated sound as he lets the bottle drop down to the table with a hollow noise. “How much better can it be?” he mutters, and something about the way he asks the question curls hot in Richie’s stomach like a coiled iron stovetop.

_How much better, Eds? Funny you should ask because I’ve been dying to show you._

Richie clenches a hand over his knee and pointedly looks at Eddie’s empty bottle. “Looks like you’re out, there, slugger.”

Eddie nods, looking at it. “Yeah, I think I might…” He lifts his eyebrows uneasily.

“What?”

“…get another…” says Eddie, somewhat sheepishly. He bites his bottom lip and winces up at Richie, like he’s expecting Richie to tell him no. Like Richie could fucking tell him no. He’s here right now, isn’t he?

“Fucking do it, Eds,” he says firmly. “Get two.”

Eddie laughs, his eyes crinkling, and scoots himself down to the edge of the booth before standing. He splays two hands out on the end of the table and leans in. “You want one?”

“Nah, I’m still workin’ on this.” Richie lifts his half-empty bottle with a smile.

Eddie scrunches his nose and raps his knuckles on the table once before turning to go up to the bar and leaving Richie to wonder how one man can be so fucking adorable and so fucking stressful at the same time.

It’s something he would text Carla, honestly, if he had enough money on his Jordanian SIM card. And knew her number off the top of his head. And knew the protocol for texting internationally. None of which he does. But he does have Bev’s number, and as far as friends go, Bev is the next best thing.

**\--Richie [20:01]--  
**So whats the protocol on getting drinks with ur straight best friend  
**\--Richie [20:03]--  
**Like who pays and who puts out bc currently im happy 2 do both

Richie watches Eddie at the bar, knowing he shouldn’t but finally unable to stop himself. Eddie’s leaning on his forearms, one foot braced against the foot-rail so his hip is cocked out, alertly watching the bartender throw together two whiskey sodas for another couple. (No, not _another_ couple. A couple. Just a couple.) He looks like a hunting dog, sleek and tightly wound and pointing in the direction of his quarry. When the bartender quirks an eyebrow at him, he asks, _Keman Heineken, low samaht_, fluently, confidently, the way Richie knows he only can because he’s three beers deep. He smiles, the shadow of a dimple showing. He couldn’t have come up with a more alluring pose if he’d tried.

If they were in the States, and Richie were two-and-a-half beers in like he is now, Richie would buy Eddie’s drink for him. Try to chat him up. Pray viciously for success, because he would know at a glance that Eddie is incredible, because he knows now only two months into knowing Eddie that he’s everything he wants. In his wildest dreams, he’d make out with him in the hallway leading to the bathrooms, press him against the wall so he could lick behind his teeth and suck at his throat, breathlessly ask if he wanted to go back to his apartment so they could grind against each other until Richie made him come in his underwear like a teenager, just so he could watch Eddie’s face when he’s writhing in ecstasy. And afterwards, in his wildest, most fantastical dreams, Eddie wouldn’t make excuses, wouldn’t say, “Wow, I don’t know what came over me, I’ve never done that before, with… you know…” He would say, “I wanted you the moment I saw you, too, Richie,” and he’d look into his eyes and kiss him sweetly and ask to spend the night, ask to spend every night from then on, worry performatively about moving too fast but still he would stay, but still he would fall asleep on the couch after watching every movie, but still Richie would find his running shoes by the door and Eddie’s pickles on his plate for… for forever, maybe. Maybe.

But they’re not in the States.

Richie’s phone buzzes. He swallows drily and rips his eyes from Eddie to check the screen.

**\--Ukhti [20:08]--  
**Eddies straight?!?!?

Richie rolls his eyes and shoves his phone back in his pocket.

A minute later, Eddie falls back into the booth, gripping his pint glass. “Wow, that’s full,” he says looking down at it, eyes going wide. He stoops forward and puts his lips to the edge of the glass and slurps loudly.

Richie bursts out laughing.

“What??” Eddie asks defensively, nearly spitting on the T.

“Nothing,” laughs Richie, smiling too fondly at him, “you’re just ridiculous right now.”

“Well, you’re ridiculous always,” Eddie bites back.

“You saying I’m rubbing off on you, Eds?”

“Don’t call me Eds.”

“Edward Spaghedward the Fourteenth.”

“Richard Bitchard the Negative Eleventh.”

Richie tosses his head back so hard he hears his neck crack and laughs until tears are pricking behind his clenched-tight eyes. When he manages to crack one eye open and swipes at it with a knuckle, he sees Eddie is sipping his beer, a deeply smug smile on his face.

“Eddie,” Richie gasps, slapping a hand down on the table, “you’re so fucking funny, man.”

Eddie’s glass hits the table with a _bang_ that makes Richie jump and let out an awkward giggle. “Yeah? You really think I’m funny?”

Richie pauses, wondering what his angle is. “Sure. I mean, you still need my training, but…”

“Funnier than Stan?”

Richie barks out a laugh that dies down quickly when he sees Eddie is staring at him over his glass. He chuckles a few times more, uncertainly, before he says, “I mean. Stan’s a funny guy, too.”

Eddie rolls his eyes and sighs deeply.

Richie’s shoulders hoist up to his ears. “What!? What’s that for!?”

“I don’t know, I just wish you’d fuck Stan and get over it.”

Air bursts through Richie’s lips, making an incredulous, high-pitched noise. “Excuse me, _what_?”

“Or blow him or whatever you do,” Eddie goes on, waving his hand in the air dismissively as he takes a deep pull from his pint glass. He’s draining this one fast, too, Richie notes.

Richie laughs again helplessly, grasping desperately for something, for a joke, for a Voice to throw up before him like a shield. He finally lands on the Crotchety Old Man, sticks out his chin pugnaciously and croaks, “Whyn’tcha go fellate him or whatever you sodomites do!”

Eddie’s eyes go wide. “No! No, that’s not—”

Laughing, Richie lets go of his bottle to put his hands on his hips. He screws up one eye like Popeye and fixes Eddie with a stare. “This country’s really gone to pot! In my day, a man didn’t lay with another man. That’s what the Bible calls an Obama nation!”

Eddie’s mouth goes taut and then he bursts into laughter so loud the person in the booth behind them cranes his neck to get a look. Richie starts smiling, too, watching Eddie’s face crinkle up and go red, how he doesn’t even cover his mouth. He just lets himself laugh.

“Okay, that’s— that’s not what I meant,” Eddie says, catching his breath. “I didn’t mean ‘you’ in general, I meant you in particular. ’Cause you, like, talk about blowjobs a lot.”

“Ohhh.” Richie tilts his head back with a smile. “Do I?”

“Yes,” Eddie says, rolling his eyes. “Like all the time.”

“Oh, yeah, I guess I kinda do.”

“They’re your signature,” Eddie says, and mimes the blowjob gesture in a way that has Richie’s pulse jumping in his palms.

“I don’t know where you’d get that idea,” Richie says airily, and then, as a _joke_, just to be _funny_, he closes his lips around the rim of the Amstel bottle and slides the smooth glass neck into his mouth until it hits the back of his throat.

To complete the joke—because it’s totally a joke, a _joke_—he lets his eyelids flutter shut like he’s gagging for it, twists the bottle in his mouth a few times like his sliding a hand over the shaft, even considers slobbering over the outside to get the faux-phallus sloppy and wet, to be… to be _funny_, not— Maybe if he were four beers deep instead of nearly three. Instead, he pops off the top to take a deeply self-satisfied sip, just as Eddie makes a strange noise somewhere in his throat, high-pitched and nasal, that sends a spark shooting so fast up Richie’s spine that his hand spasms on the bottle, and it drops to the table with a deafening clatter.

Eddie jumps at the sound. “_Richie_—”

His heart is pounding. It feels like everyone’s looking. “Eddie.”

“—what the fuck, that’s so—” He licks his lips. His eyes are dark and wide. “—_gross_…”

Richie snorts, raises his hand, half-placating, half-dismissive, as blood rushes in his ears. “No, it’s—”

“D-do you have… any idea how many people have probably _touched_ that??” Eddie is looking anywhere but at Richie. He fixates on the bottle in something like disgust. “How the fuck can you _do_ that? Doesn’t it make you want to gag??”

“Nah,” Richie says casually, before he can stop himself, “I just pretend it’s a dick.”

“You just pret—” Eddie sputters, running a hand through his hair. “That’s— I—”

And Richie’s gone so far already, he might as well say: “It’s like my gag reflex is on a hair trigger _except_ for cock, you know?”

Eddie make another odd noise and then compulsively buries his nose in his beer and takes several deep gulps. He gasps loudly when he sets the glass down, and blinks intensely, clearly intending to say something. His jaw works but it’s a couple seconds before he finally breathes: “_The bacteria_.”

Richie can’t help it. He bursts out laughing. “Oh my god, Eds. You are a fucking caricature of yourself right now.”

“Shut the fuck up!”

“No, you are,” Richie says eagerly, feeling words bubbling up in his throat, trying desperately to turn around, push the focus back onto Eddie, shove the hot potato of scrutiny back into his hands. “You’re like if you went to a Renaissance faire and sat for the portrait artist and the guy asked, like, ‘Tell me something about yourself, young man,’ and you said, ‘Well, I’m kind of a hypochondriac,’ and he was like, ‘Got it,’ and then you sat in the chair for ten minutes smiling like an awkward moron and at the end of it he turned the easel around and it was a drawing of you being chased by a giant amoeba.”

“Fuck. You.”

And somehow the way Eddie says it sounds meaner than it has before, nastier, so Richie retorts without thinking: “Fuck me yourself, you coward.”

Eddie’s jaw snaps shut and he turns a shade of red not previously seen, looking like he wants to leap across the table and throttle Richie with his bare hands. His eyes are blazing. Richie just looks back at him and raises the bottle back to his lips.

Eddie wrenches his gaze away, frowning hard up at the ceiling. “What the fuck, Richie? It’s like now that I know you like men you can’t talk about anything else.”

Richie bristles, shifting so he’s sitting straight up in the booth. He jabs a finger into the table, now meeting Eddie’s glare pound for pound. “No, I was always like this, you just thought I was joking. _Actually_, if we wanna get technical,” he says, and he notices heat creeping into his voice, “it’s like now that you know I like men, _you _can’t talk about anything else.”

Eddie glowers at him so hard Richie’s surprised he doesn’t turn to stone right there in the booth. “_Fuck_ you.”

Richie opens his mouth to retaliate—_All right, if you want to so bad_, or, _Sounds like you’d rather I fuck _you_—_but uses his last shred of self-control to take a deep breath and bite hard on the inside of his cheek instead. “You know,” he says bitterly, “I’m starting to think you really don’t like me after all, you’re so fucking mean to me.”

Eddie huffs, almost growling in the back of his throat. “Oh, please! You fucking know I like you. I’ve said so enough times.”

“Yeah, well…!” Richie sputters, casting about in his mind for something to say. “Put your money where your fucking mouth is, Kaspbrak.”

Eddie’s eyes go wide beneath his stormy brows. “The fuck does _that _mean?”

“I don’t know! I just said it! I say things!” He sighs loudly, running his hands through his hair. He feels suddenly like he wants to run out the bar, go flying down the hill they walked up to get here. He feels like he did in Palmyra, wanting to _run run run_. “It means,” he breathes, “I dunno, be fucking nice to me.”

Eddie rolls his eyes up at the ceiling before they fall back to Richie. “You’ve said multiple times you only like people who are mean to you!” he says, exasperated.

“Yeah, well…!” He jerks his head, jittery and not knowing what to say. “I have limits. A guy can only take so much.”

Eddie scoffs, looking away. “Yeah, okay,” he says dismissively, and something about it gets Richie’s hackles up again.

“Treat people the way you’d like to be treated, Eds,” he says loudly. “The golden rule. Ain’t you ever heard of it?”

“Please. All I’ve ever done is treat you the way you’ve treated me.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah!”

“How do you fucking figure?”

“You _spat _on me the first time you met me, asshole!”

“Only because you made me laugh!”

“Yeah, exactly, you were laughing at me, someone you’d only just met!”

“No, I was laughing _with _you, because you were cute and what you said was fucking funny, and I wanted you to like me!”

Eddie glares at him. “Fuck you, stop saying I’m cute. I’m not fucking cute. You don’t fucking think I’m cute.”

Richie rolls his head up to the ceiling, exhaling sharply through his nose. His fingers are clenching in the air, his nerves sparking with a million things to say, to do, none of which he wants to have said or done. “Well— I don’t know how else to _talk _to you, Eddie!” he finally says, nearly shouting.

Eddie doesn’t say anything. He just stares at Richie across the table, his eyes fiery and blazing. He looks tense, ready to spring. He swallows, and Richie watches his adam’s apple bob along the column of his throat. It’s the angriest he’s looked since that night on Rainbow Street, when Richie chased him down, when they sat overlooking the cold, starry city. He wonders if Eddie would chase him down, if their roles were reversed. Knows he wouldn’t.

Richie wrenches away his gaze, forces himself to try to relax. He takes a deep breath and lets it out. Suddenly he is itching, craving a cigarette and, even more, fresh air.

“So… I think I’m gonna go,” he says slowly, quietly. He reaches for his jacket and pulls it on as he rises from the booth, feeling Eddie’s eyes on him like twin pricks of white-hot pins. He pauses by the end of the table and meets Eddie’s gaze again. His eyes are wide and frank, studying Richie from under bowed brows. His bottom lip is red and swollen, like he’s been chewing it while Richie wasn’t looking. Richie stares at it.

_If they were in the States…_

“You look pretty,” Richie says, his heart in his throat.

Eddie’s face flushes and he looks away, glaring down at his nearly empty glass. “Fuck you,” he grumbles. It feels like a reflex.

“Well, you do,” he says simply, shrugging one shoulder in defeat. He raps a knuckle on the table, and Eddie glances furtively at him and back. “Good night, Denise,” he tells him hollowly, before he walks out of the bar, clutching his jacket tightly, consolingly, around him.

***

**richie: **ok carla idk wehre the FUCK uve been but tihgns are FUCKING WIERD  
we wnet for those dirnks and he askde me all these qiestiions about like bieng bi and my past rletaionshrips and   
and i got mad at him and he got mad at me and so i clalde him pretty and  
and he askrd me abuot blowjobs, carla!!  
BLOWJOBS  
and i may have deep thoarated a beer boltle aftarwrads but  
BLOWJBOS!!**  
**CALRA!!!!!  
HE ADKED ME ABUTO BWOLOJBS CRALA!!!!!!!!!!  
BLWOJOBS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BOLJWORBS CARLAR!!!
> 
> thanks as always to [@jajs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jajs/pseuds/Jajs) for the beta read! This one in particular needed a heavy hand and now I’m sure it’s probably like 1-2k longer than it was… woof!
> 
> feel free to come talk at me on twitter! i’m [@tempestbreak_](https://twitter.com/tempestbreak_).
> 
> Arabic glossary:  
_‘afwan_: excuse me  
_ahlan wa sahlan_: welcome  
_akhi_: my brother  
_aywa_: yeah  
_habibi_: my dear  
_keman_: another; again  
_kiifik_: how are you? [to fem.]  
_low samaht_: please  
_shu biddak_: what do you want?  
_ukhti_: my sister  
_yaa_: [marker of address, no direct translation but said when you’re addressing someone directly, as in “yaa ritchee”]


	16. march ii: it’s amazing what you’ll find face to face

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from “face to face” by daft punk

The next day, Richie doesn’t hear from Eddie.

He wakes blearily to some belatedly amused chats from Carla—_omg ur a mess. borljaerbs crawler!!! saw mags lookin hot in the trader joes the other day btw, she says shes visiting u?_—and promptly shuts his laptop again.

There are no chats from Eddie. No texts from Eddie. No Facebook messages, or comments, or—_yaa allah_—even _pokes _from Eddie.

Well, just what the fuck did he expect, confessing his feelings for his (66 percent, 71 percent… 74 percent…) straight friend.

He spends the day off rewatching _Arrested Development _with Bill in their room while they fold the two huge batches of laundry that Mama dumps on their beds, the fabric stiff and scratchy from air-drying. That evening, thirteen-year-old Hamza awkwardly asks if they want to watch a movie with him, and Richie has to stifle a laugh when he realizes it’s the new _Twilight_ movie.

He also has to stifle his urge to text Eddie about it.

Near midnight, when Richie finally leans over to turn off his bedside lamp, he checks his phone one last time.

**\--0 new messages--**

Richie takes off his glasses with a sigh, and the clatter of the plastic frames on the bedside table is the last thing he hears before he tucks in his earbuds—_at long last it’s crashed, its colossal mass has broken up into bits in my moat_—and, eyes clenched and knees drawn up around the emptiness in his chest, tries to fall to sleep.

***

When Richie walks into class on Wednesday morning, Eddie does not look up. Richie pauses by the seat he normally takes and chances a glance over at him. Eddie ignores him but for the slight reddening of his cheeks and the way he hunches his shoulders even more steeply, frowning deeply only inches from the screen of his laptop.

“_Sabah al-kheir, yaa _E-Eddie,” Bill says, far too cheerfully for the mood.

“_Sabah an-noor_,” Eddie mumbles, hunkering even farther into his seat. His eyes flick to Bill and back to the screen.

Stomach twisting, Richie plonks his bag down in the seat next to him and blows a big raspberry with the fat of his tongue. “I’m putting a moratorium on _sabah an-noor_,” he announces loudly, falling into his seat. “I’m not saying _sabah an-noor _ever again.” As he opens his laptop, he sees Eddie glance at him out of the corner of his eye.

Bill laughs, pulling his textbook out of his bag. “Oh yeah? What are you g-going to say instead?”

Richie shrugs—exaggerated, theatrical. “Iiii ’unno,” he says, opening his mouth too wide, rolling his head with it. “_Sabah an-noor _is just _sooo _January to me. ‘Morning of light’? Pfft. Lame. It’s March now! In March we get creative! In March we say shit like _sabah al-ward_. _Sabah al-full!_”

“Some flowery m-muh-morning’s you’re planning to have.”

“Fuck yeah, from the, like, rose and jasmine shit we have in the bathroom,” says Richie, tapping his space bar until his laptop wakes up, ignoring how Eddie is full-on looking at him now, ignoring how it’s giving his stomach a sharp little thrill to make him look. He snaps his fingers, like a lightbulb is going off. “_Sabah an-na‘naa‘! _That’s mint from the toothpaste.”

Eddie snorts.

Richie lifts his head to grin triumphantly at him. “Got something to say, Shortstack?”

Eddie rolls his eyes away with a huff. “You can’t just come up with whatever responses you want. I’ve heard people say the first two, but ‘morning of _mint_’—?”

Then Manal sweeps in with her broad, toothy smile and her coat abaya—forest green today, to match her hijab—and sings, “_Sabah al-kheir, _**students!**”

“_Sabah an-noor_,” says Eddie.

_“Sabah al-full_,” says Bill.

“_Sabah an-na‘naa‘!”_ sings Richie, beaming as Eddie glares at him (as Eddie looks at him, as Eddie acknowledges him).

Manal’s eyebrows shoot up into her hijab as she sets down her messenger bag. “_Sabah an-na‘naa‘_...” she repeats in that amused singsong she gets when one of them has misstepped. “**Why is it a **_sabah an-na‘naa‘_, _yaa Ritchee_?”

“**Because** **when I**—” and Richie exaggeratedly mimes brushing his teeth, lips peeled back to his gums and elbow winging out, while Bill laughs helplessly and Manal smilingly provides him the Modern Standard Arabic for _brush _“—**my mouth—**”

“**My teeth**.”

“—**my teeth, the taste is of mint. Morning of mint!**” Richie holds his hands out wide, satisfied with himself.

Manal bobs her head, smiling. “**Yea, verily**.”

“But that’s not a _thing_!”

Richie jumps and turns, as does Bill, as does Manal. Eddie’s face goes red at all their eyes on him, but his eyebrows are pinched together and he’s leaning forward in his seat. “It’s not a _thing_,” he says heatedly. “You can’t just—”

“_Bil-‘arabi_,” chides Manal.

“**It is not possible**,” Eddie switches, obligingly, fumbling a little as he does, which only seems to incense him more, if his light karate-chopping is anything to go by, **“to say anything you want when someone says **_sabah al-kheir_. **Right?** **You have to say **_sabah an-noor_, **or **_sabah al-ward, _**or— or**_ sabah al-fuul—_”

Manal lets out her kind, tinkling laugh, and Eddie’s mouth clicks shut. He goes even redder.

“**What?**” he asks sharply.

“It is _sabah al-full_, morning of jasmine,” Manal says, her rare English sweet and stilted, a little jarring to hear when they’re so used to her fluent Arabic. “Not _sabah al-fuul_.”

It takes a moment for the wires to connect in Richie’s head, but then he bursts into laughter that comes straight from his chest, almost making him cough. “Morning of _beans_!” he hoots, and Eddie is full-on glowering (looking) at him.

“Shut up.”

“_Fuul _is the bean thing! The mushy brown bean thing!”

“Shut up!”

“_Bil_-_‘arabi_,” says Richie, resting his chin in his hand, a shit-eating grin on his face.

Eddie goes so red he’s practically purple, as Bill laughs good-naturedly beside him.

***

Eddie storms out of the room as soon as their MSA class is over and doesn’t come back until the minute he has to. When their _‘ammiya_ class starts, it feels like a reset: Eddie doing everything he can to ignore Richie, Richie doing everything he can to make that impossible. Manal has them do a skit in class—Richie as a clerk in a clothing store, Eddie and Mike as shoppers—to practice using their new vocabulary words, and Richie can’t say exactly what it is that makes him pull an old Monty Python sketch out of his ass, but when Eddie asks him if they have any short-sleeved shirts, he tells him, _no, no short-sleeved shirts, _with an apologetic shrug. And Manal giggles, and Mike grins, and Eddie grits his teeth and asks if, in that case, they have any _long_-sleeved shirts, and Richie smiles innocently back and says, _no, no long-sleeved shirts_, and so on—sweaters, jackets, _pants_, for the love of god, you must have _pants_, you do sell _clothes, _right??—as Richie tells Eddie they sent all their pants to be dry-cleaned, and Mike and Manal are in hysterics, and Eddie turns a deep eggplant and looks like he’s about to blast into space, his hands running through his slightly curling hair so many times that it’s nearly standing on end.

Eddie storms out even harder after that one, flinging his bag over his shoulder so hard it smacks into the doorframe on his way out with a resounding _bang_.

Mike lifts his eyebrows at Richie in question at that, but all Richie offers is a shrug. Richie can’t say why this is his strategy, honestly; doesn’t want to examine it too closely. All he knows is that the creeping dread he feels when Eddie won’t meet his gaze, when there’s _silence _from Eddie where there was a constant stream of sound before—before Richie called him pretty and showed off how he can deep-throat a fucking beer bottle (because sober Richie can shame-facedly admit that that’s what it was, showing off, not a fucking _joke_)—that haunting, slithering dread is quelled when he’s getting some kind of reaction. Even if it’s anger. Even if it’s hate.

Eddie doesn’t have class on Wednesday afternoons, so Richie tells himself he’s not surprised that Eddie’s not in the lounge during lunch. Most days at least half of them are in there for lunch: Stan tapping on his laptop in the armchair, Bev laid out on the couch with her hood pulled up over her flaming-red hair as she tries to catch a precious few more minutes of sleep, while Richie and Eddie sit shoulder-to-shoulder on the loveseat, watching whatever’s on the docket for the day, elbowing each other and protesting loudly when either one of them takes up too much of the sofa.

Today, Eddie is nowhere to be seen, not even his backpack. Richie sits on the loveseat by himself until it’s time for class. After class, as he’s passing the empty corner classroom on his way out, he pauses as he catches sight of Eddie, sitting in the darkening room, talking animatedly and half-smiling into his laptop. Richie’s stomach pangs painfully.

Eddie looks up and locks eyes with Richie. A jolt shoots up Richie’s spine, and he lifts his hand to wave.

Eddie turns back to his screen, and Richie’s heart plummets. He waits around a few more seconds, but Eddie doesn’t look up again. Doesn’t acknowledge him.

Hollowly, Richie tucks in his earbuds and shuffles away.

***

The next day goes much the same, arguably worse. Even Bill seems to pick up on the fact that this is not Richie and Eddie’s standard schtick, his eyebrows shooting towards his hairline when Eddie slams a hand into the desk.

Fortunately, it’s Thursday, the day that Richie’s mom is slated to arrive. She’s arriving midday, which Richie was not originally going to use to get out of Contemporary Islamic Thought, but what with everything that’s going on with Eddie and the fact that he still has yet to do a single reading for the class, he decides to take the opportunity. He tells Bev as much at lunch, lounging on the loveseat—yet again, by himself, his back to Eddie, who is sitting in one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs in the back of the room—a place he has never sat before today, Richie’s pretty sure—bent over his Arabic textbook.

“That’s nice,” says Ben, next to Bev. “Meeting her at the airport?”

“Nah, waste of money to take an hourlong cab ride. Going to meet her at the hotel, though, and then take her to dinner. Probably on Rainbow, if anyone wants to join us for drinks afterwards.”

Bev claps, delighted. “Oh my god, yes of _course_. I’m so excited to meet her.”

“Me, too,” says Stan, not looking up from his laptop. “I’d love to pick her brain.”

“About what, pray tell, Stanley?” Richie asks sweetly.

“Best practices and lessons learned for dealing with Richie Tozier, of course,” Stan replies easily. “For instance, right now he’s on the furniture. Should I shake a can of quarters at him?”

“No way,” says Richie, grinning, “getting on the furniture’s a rolled-up newspaper. I only got the can of quarters if I humped someone’s leg.”

The others laugh good-naturedly. Eddie’s corner of the room is silent.

“Did she end up getting you that hotel room, Richie?” Bev asks, eyes sparkling.

“Oh, fuck,” says Richie, blinking. He’d forgotten, with everything going on with Eddie, that he’d asked his mom for the hotel room for his birthday. She emailed him back some time in the past couple days, right? Did she say when that was? “I think that’s… tonight…” he says, frowning.

Bev drops her feet from the edge of the coffee table and sits forward, grinning. “Tonight?” she says eagerly. “Thursday night? Party night? _Hifla _night?”

“_Hifla _night,” Richie confirms with a smirk.

“Wait, what’s going on?” asks Ben.

Bev turns her thousand-watt smile on him, and Richie watches his eyes go goofy and dazzled. “Remember how I told you Richie’s mom might get him a hotel room for his birthday? So we could all hang out without worrying about going home to host families afterwards?”

“Ohh,” says Ben. “That’s tonight?”

“Apparently,” says Stan, with an eyebrow raised. “It’s also the first I’ve heard of it.”

Eddie snorts from his corner but doesn’t say anything more.

“Well,” says Richie, trying to ignore how Eddie’s snort is rankling, itching under his collar, “you’re still invited, Stanley, if you can pencil it in.”

Eddie snorts again, more loudly.

“You’re invited, too, Eds!” Richie calls brashly over his shoulder, not looking.

“Not my name.”

“Oh, right. I forgot,” says Richie, his spine crawling irritably. “You’re invited, too, Denise.”

Eddie’s chair scrapes as he pushes back violently from the table. Richie doesn’t turn to look at him but he can hear him shoving books into his bag.

“Denise?” Ben asks, tilting his head.

“It’s an inside joke,” Richie mutters, ignoring Eddie’s huff, because what the fuck does _he _have to be mad about? _Richie’s _the one who showed Eddie his whole hand the other night. And yeah, maybe it was a little over the top, maybe Richie came on a little strong, what with the bottle fellatio and the “fuck me yourself, coward,” but Eddie doesn’t have to be such a prick about it.

“Actually, everyone’s invited,” says Bev, with a proprietary air. She smiles at Richie. “Hope you don’t mind me commandeering this party, _akhi_, but I think mine was pretty successful.”

“Yep, you’re a regular party wizard, Bevvie,” Richie says bitterly. “Anyone who can get Eddie to let his hair down is a fucking miracle-worker.”

Bev frowns at him and cocks her head in that way that says, _What exactly are you getting at? _But he just waves her off.

“_Anyway_,” Richie goes on, loud over the sounds of Eddie angrily zipping his backpack. “Yes, everyone is invited, both to drinks and to the hotel.”

“What time?” Ben asks obligingly, as Eddie throws his backpack on over his shoulder and makes for the door.

“Eddie, don’t you want to know what time?” Bev asks.

“Oh, Eddie’s not gonna come,” Richie says savagely. “Didn’t you know? He hates me.”

Richie catches one last glimpse of Eddie’s face, eyebrows pinched and eartips reddened, before the door closes behind him.

***

Richie’s mom is staying in a hotel near Fourth Circle, a shmancy place that has metal detectors and a TSA-style bag check at the entrance. As the guard is waving her wand over Richie’s long-ass arms, he look up and catches a glimpse of his mother, Maggie Tozier, dark curls bouncing as she waits impatiently for him on the other side, smiling widely.

Once he’s released, Richie strides forward and flings his arms open wide to engulf her in a tight hug. “Fancy seeing you here,” he says, his chin resting on the top of her head.

“It truly is a small world,” Maggie replies warmly, rubbing his back. She comes up only to Richie’s chest but somehow it’s still a comfort to have her arms around him.

Maggie takes a step back to look up at him, touching his hair, his cheek. She smiles at him, showing the same overlarge front teeth that Richie has. “You look so grown up!” she proclaims.

“Aw, c’mon, Mom, you just saw me like two months ago.”

“I know, but you do! What’re they feeding you here, MiracleGro?”

“Almost exclusively falafel, actually.” He looks around the lobby, trying to catch a glimpse of his mom’s traditional travel companions. “Where are Dee and Seamus?”

“Jetlagged. They’re sitting tonight out, and I would be, too, if I weren’t seeing my favorite son,” Maggie says, poking him in the side.

“I’m your only son.”

“And yet there have been times in the past when you have not been my favorite.”

“Oof,” Richie says, clasping a hand over his heart. “Eight thousand miles just to roast me.”

“You’ve had worse,” Maggie says, grinning. “Anyway, I’m ready to be shown the sights, but _first_…” She ducks over the lobby armchair, fishing behind it, while Richie raises an eyebrow. She stands back up with a smile, holding a gift bag in her hands. “Happy early birthday, fruit of my loins.”

“Mom…” Richie groans, bending his knees as he takes the bag. “You didn’t have to get me anything, you came all this way—”

“Oh, I didn’t,” she says. “It’s from Carla. I saw her in Trader Joe’s over the weekend and told her I was coming to visit you, asked if there was anything she wanted me to bring you for your birthday. Did you know she got her hair cut short? It looks adorable.”

“Yeah, she’s been talking about it for a while…” Richie says, smiling as he sits down in a lobby armchair to open up the gift bag. There’s a bunch of small things, wrapped in newspaper comic strips. A bag of the special brand of corn chips that are made in their hometown, baked with soy sauce and lime, almost all of them crushed to bits from the journey. A candle carved into the shape of Jesus. A novelty bottle of hand sanitizer with a picture of a thoughtful woman on it under the label, _Wait—was that slutty? _On the back of the packaging it says, _Kills 99.99% of uncertainty_.

Among everything is a card from Carla that says:

> _Happy birthday, ho! _
> 
> _When I saw Mags in TJ’s the other day, I thought about flying out to surprise you for about 2 seconds but then I realized, WITH WHAT $$$, CARLA?? So, you get slutty hand sanitizer instead. _
> 
> _The candle is to make sure you’re keeping the Lord in your thoughts so close to the Holy Land, but if not, that’s what the hand sanitizer’s for._
> 
> _Love ya lots,  
Carl’s Jr _

When Richie looks up, smiling, Maggie is turning over the hand sanitizer, giggling at it. “I have no idea where Carla finds these things, but I do so enjoy them,” she says, snickering. “Think I could get some of my own?”

“Mom, gross,” says Richie. “Now I don’t want to go to dinner with you.”

“Ah, darn it. Back to the airport, I guess.”

***

Since it’s still early for dinner, they settle on doing a little sightseeing to pass the time. When Richie asks what she’d like to see, Maggie only smiles and says, “Oh, I don’t care. Tonight I’d just like to see how you live while you’re here. How would you spend your night if I wasn’t visiting?” Richie decides to take her downtown to work up an appetite.

He shows her the covered market, some shops, Hammudeh. She tuts at him vaguely about piracy but seems impressed by the selection in spite of herself. Then they head to Rainbow Street, where he almost ushers her into one of the nicer restaurants, overlooking the city, before he remembers that she wants the _authentic study abroad experience_, so instead he takes her to Books@Cafe. She explores the bookstore downstairs, before they sit down for a small dinner on the terrace above.

With a laugh, Maggie sets down the menu almost as quickly as she picks it up again. “I don’t know what any of this is,” she chuckles.

“What are you looking at?” Richie asks, peering.

“I don’t know, everything? Anything?” She squints through her wire-rimmed reading glasses, pointing. “What’s… man-koo-shuh?”

“Oh, _man’ousheh_? It’s like, dough with other things baked into it. Cheese and meat and stuff. They’re good.”

“Okay, then what’s mootable?”

Richie laughs. “_Mutabbal_? It’s like baba ghanoush but better. Smokier. We’ll get some.” He catches sight of a waiter and hails him in _‘ammiya_ and orders some appetizers and a mint lemonade for each of them, for good measure. When the waiter nods and strides away, Richie turns back at Maggie with a grin, only to see her reaching for the Fine-brand tissues at the end of the table, her eyes shining.

“Mom, what the hell??”

She shakes her head and pushes her glasses up into her hair, smiling as she swipes beneath her eyes. “You’re just so grown up here, I…” She heaves a helpless shrug, dabbing at her nose.

Richie drops his head back on his neck, feeling bashful. “_Mo-om_…”

“I can’t help it! You’re my baby! Just think: twenty-one years ago, I was just about to go into labor, right on schedule for your due date, March fifth. And then, a mere thirty-two hours later, you arrived…”

Richie winces. “Late to my own birthday.”

“You were a trial from the very start,” Maggie laughs, a little wetly. She reaches a hand across the table to him. “My Richie.”

Sighing, Richie takes it and squeezes. “Actually, this is good,” he says. “Get it out of your system now, before you meet Stan.”

Their food and drinks arrive, and they talk while they pick at the appetizers (Maggie: “Ooh, I like the little cheesy ones.”) and sip on the lemonades (Again, Maggie: “It’s missing something. I think vodka.”). When they’ve finished, Richie directs her down the road to La Calle, to see if she can get that vodka after all.

Bev shows up only a few minutes after they settle down at a large table on the top floor. A huge smile splits her face when she lays eyes on Maggie.

“Oh my god, you look exactly like I thought you would,” she says from the top of the stairs before striding forward, her arms outstretched.

“You must be Bev,” says Maggie, standing from the table to fold her into a hug. She looks over Bev’s shoulder as Ben, Bill, and Stan appear on the stairs behind her, not nearly as effusive but still smiling, and steps back from Bev to hug all of them in turn. “I’ve seen so many pictures of you all on Facebook, I feel like I know you. Ben, and… Stan…? You were in Syria with Richie, too, right? And you must be Bill, the roommate.”

Bill looks oddly touched as he bends to receive Maggie’s hug, his eyebrows twitching down. “N-nice to meet you, Mrs. Tuh-Tozier.”

“Oh, please, you can call me Maggie.”

“But I’d prefer it if you called me Mr. Tozier,” Richie says cheekily.

Maggie bats him lightly on the shoulder. “Richie…” She turns to the others as they all take their seats. “You can’t let him get away with that sort of thing while he’s here. He’s going to be a nightmare coming home.”

“Believe me, we don’t,” says Stan, opening the menu.

Maggie laughs. “So who’s left?” she asks, looking around. “This isn’t everyone, is it? Who isn’t here?”

“Mike,” says Stan. “My roommate. He also went to Syria with us. He’s getting his hair cut, but he says he’s going to try to make it down later.”

“The other one is Eddie,” says Bev.

“Oh, Eddie, _that’s _right,” says Maggie, snapping her fingers. She looks to Richie with a smile. “He’s your best friend here, isn’t he, sweetheart?”

Richie ignores how all eyes turn to him. Heat creeps up his neck as he shrugs. “I’m pretty close with everyone, I guess,” he mumbles, twisting in his seat to flag the waiter.

“Oh,” says Maggie, and he can hear in her voice that she’s picked up on _something_. It roils in his stomach. “Well. I hope I get to meet both Mike _and_ Eddie.”

Richie bites the inside of his cheek and thinks, _Don’t hold your breath._

***

They all order drinks and settle in to chat. Bev, Ben, and Maggie strike up an easy conversation, and Richie half-listens to it while he talks with Stan and Bill. Bill leans forward on his elbows, slowly sipping his beer—the cheapest one they had on the menu—while Stan sits stiffly in his chair next to him, frequently checking his phone.

Finally, Stan looks up with an apologetic grimace. “Mike is saying it took longer at the barber than he thought it would. He probably won’t be able to make it tonight to meet you, Mrs. Tozier.”

“Ah, bummer,” says Richie.

“That’s too bad,” says Maggie with a disappointed head tilt. “What about Eddie? Any word on if he’ll be joining us?”

“Yeahhh, I don’t think he’s coming, Mom.” Richie sips his beer and pointedly ignores Stan and Bev’s eyes on him.

“Oh, is he busy?”

“He’s probably Skyping with his girlfriend,” Richie says, trying not to let the bitterness seep into his tone. At his mom’s raised eyebrow, he knows he’s failed.

After they’ve all finished their drinks, Maggie looks around the table with a smile. “Well, Bev has told me she’s going to be joining us back at the hotel to take advantage of my birthday present for Richie. Anyone else?”

Stan purses his lips and shakes his head, pushing his chair back from the table. “I can’t, unfortunately.”

“Aw, does your _shish tawouq _need you at home?” Richie asks cheekily, batting his eyelashes. To his surprise and amusement, Stan’s cheeks go slightly pink. Isn’t _that _interesting?

“I think I’ll have to miss it, too, R-Ruh-Richie,” Bill says wryly, before Richie can explore the fascinating blush blooming on Stan’s face further. “It would be kinda w-weird for me to tell Mama and Baba I’m staying at the huh-hotel because _your_ mom is here.”

Maggie laughs appreciatively at that. “Whatever do you mean, Bill? You don’t think your host family would approve of our intergenerational love?”

Bill sputters and goes red, while Bev hoots, “Now we know where Richie gets it from!”

Richie sighs. “Mom, how many times do I have to tell you? The joke is that I hit on my friends’ moms, not that my mom hits on my friends!”

“Ah, you’re right, sweetheart, I always get that one mixed up. Sorry, Bill.”

“N-n-n-no problem,” Bill stammers, still red in the face.

“I’ll be there, I think,” says Ben brightly. “I have to go home first, though. We’re supposed to be going to Salt again tomorrow with the host family, but if we’re not leaving too early, I can make it.”

“I have to go home first, too,” says Bev, “and to the store to get us some supplies.” She grins with delight, eyebrows waggling. “How does the birthday boy feel about tequila?”

***

Richie goes back to the hotel with his mom and checks into his room. The room is amazing—or maybe that’s just how it feels to Richie after two months spent sleeping on a too-short bed covered in Pokemon sheets. He flops onto one of the queen-sized beds, and it’s so _soft_, like a cloud. He nuzzles his face into the plush comforter.

He doesn’t have long to wait before there’s a _tap, tap-tap, tap-tap _at the door, and Richie rolls off the bed to go get it. Bev is standing, grinning, on the other side, and when Richie opens it fully, she triumphantly lifts two heavily laden plastic bags.

“I got the goods!” she exclaims, sweeping past him. She sets the bags down on the table and looks around the room, holding a hand over her mouth. “Oh my _god_, a queen-sized bed,” she sighs. “Does it have fitted sheets? Plain, white, grown-up fitted sheets?”

“Yes, I do believe the hotel bed has fitted sheets,” Richie says, pulling the bottles out of the bags and examining them. A bottle of tequila, some juice, some margarita mix that must have cost a pretty penny. Happy birthday to him, indeed.

She tears back the comforter and runs her hands over the white sheets below. “Wow,” she breathes, fanning herself. “I might honestly cry.” She whirls on him, eyes wide. “Would it be weird for me to take a shower? I haven’t taken a shower with good water pressure in what feels like forever.”

“Oh, _fuck_, that’s a good idea,” he says, cracking the cap on the tequila and wincing as he takes a swig. “Imagine. A shower that lasts more than five minutes.”

“I used to do my best thinking in the shower at home,” Bev says wistfully.

“Me, too,” says Richie, waggling his eyebrows salaciously.

Bev rolls her eyes at him. “All right, well, I’m making sure to take my shower before you take yours.” She flops onto the plush comforter of the second bed.

The two of them chat back and forth as they change into more relaxed clothes—Richie in his t-shirt and sweatpants, Bev in shorts, a thin, oversized sweater, and fluffy socks, because she says she’s going all out with the comfort tonight. Richie lets Bev use his laptop to pull up the _Party in the HKJ _playlist she made, while he tucks the empty ice bucket under his arm and goes in search of the ice machine. When he comes back to the room, bucket full, he finds her bopping to “D.A.N.C.E.” by Justice, and when she mimes lassoing him and reeling him in to her one-woman dance pit, he obligingly allows himself to be reeled.

The two of them laugh and dance and make drinks while knocking their hips into each other and nodding to the beat even as they slosh tequila and margarita mix into their glasses, plopping ice in willy-nilly. They drink with their arms entwined, and try to bounce coins into their drinks, and talk while leaning close on each other because they can, because there’s no one for them to offend with their friendship.

Then there’s a knock at the door, and Bev says brightly while selecting a new song, “Oh! I bet that’s Ben!” and Richie gives her a knowing look that she rebuffs with a middle finger. He swings towards the door to throw it open with a flourish and, lo and behold, it’s Ben Hanscom himself, smiling and holding a plastic bag similar to the one Bev brought.

But it’s also Eddie, half-hidden behind Ben, a hand clutching the strap of his backpack and teeth chewing hard at his bottom lip. When Richie’s gaze falls on him, he looks up from under tightly pinched brows, and their eyes lock for the first time in days. And Richie reads _something _in them, a hesitant determination that spikes in his gut.

He can’t look away.

“Happy birthday, Richie!” Ben says cheerfully. “Hope we’re not too late.”

“N-no, not at all,” says Richie, his heart thudding strangely, unable to tear his eyes from Eddie’s. And Eddie’s looking back furtively, glancing away and then back again, as though expecting each time to find Richie looking elsewhere. “Uh, come on in…”

He steps aside, mind somehow fuzzy as Ben passes him. He can’t stop staring at Eddie, at his _eyes_. They look enormous, even fuller in his face than normal, and Richie’s not sure what it is that’s making him feel like he’s falling headfirst into them there in his freckled cheeks beneath his lightly furrowed forehead and his short hair and— and that’s when he realizes it’s because—

“You got your hair cut!” he blurts out, and immediately wants to slap a hand over his dumb, obvious mouth.

Eddie’s cheeks redden as Richie’s eyes rake over him, taking in his hair, which is shorn so short it looks like the barber took clippers to it, so short that even his normally painstakingly crisp side-part has disappeared. Richie has grown so used to Eddie’s longer hair, learning to curl around his ears and nape, that this look is stark, almost startling. He stares openly, eyes crawling over it, how it bares Eddie’s ears and neck. His palms itch looking at it; he wants to run his fingers through.

Eddie looks away, his mouth screwed up petulantly as he drawls, “What gave it away?”

Richie grins lopsidedly. “It suits you.”

Eddie’s eyes flick back, his brows twitching. “You think?”

Richie nods, heart twisting. “Yeah. You look—” He stops himself with a self-conscious smile, rubbing his arm as he looks at the ceiling. “Well, you know.”

Eddie snorts and smiles back tentatively. “…Thanks.”

Heart thumping, Richie plasters on a bright smile and claps Eddie on the shoulder and guides him into the rest of the room, where Bev is hospitably pouring drinks for herself and Ben. “Look at you two,” Richie says, “bringing new meaning to the term ‘fashionably late’!”

“Shut up,” Eddie grumbles, but he allows Richie to lead him towards the makeshift drink station. He doesn’t shove at the hand Richie puts on his back, doesn’t move away when Richie leans into his space to pour him some tequila and margarita mix, only insists crankily that Richie’s not adding enough ice, his voice so close to Richie’s ear that it sends shivers down his spine.

Once the four of them have drinks, they lounge around to chat and listen to the music. Ben and Eddie change into pajamas, as well, and when Eddie comes out of the bathroom in a t-shirt and cotton shorts, Richie nearly swallows his tongue. Ben props himself up against some pillows on one bed, lightly cupping his drink on his stomach; Bev sits on the floor leaned against the mattress, her knees drawn up; Richie sprawls on his stomach lengthwise across the other bed; and Eddie perches on a chair that he draws up within arm’s reach, talking more animatedly than Richie has seen in days. Richie can’t take his eyes off him, and Eddie…

Eddie looks back. He looks back and _smiles_. “Oh, I love this song.”

Richie blinks, suddenly awash with flushing heat. Has he just been gazing awestruck at Eddie all this time? He looks away and forces himself to listen. It’s that MGMT song that Eddie always asks for—_I’m feelin’ rough I’m feelin’ raw I’m in the prime of my life_…

Richie tilts his head, his chin resting hard in his palm. “No, really? You like this song? I had no idea.”

Eddie’s eyes flash. “You’re the one who’s always playing it!”

“Only because you’re always asking me to!”

Eddie leans back in his chair to kick at Richie’s arm with a socked foot. “Shut up!”

“Make me!” Richie darts his hand out to grip Eddie’s ankle hard, his drink mercifully empty as it’s upended when Eddie begins to thrash and falls ass-first out of his chair with a loud _thwump_.

“What the fuck, Richie, let_ go_!”

“Look at this, guys!” Richie exclaims proudly to Ben and Bev, holding Eddie’s leg up by the ankle and fending off Eddie’s other kicking foot with his hand, trying not to look down the leg of Eddie’s shorts. “Caught me a hundred-and-forty-pounder! Think I’ll cook him up on the grill and serve him with butter and lem— agh, _fuck_, Eddie, not the _glasses_!”

When Eddie, breathing hard, has scrambled back into his chair and is glaring red-faced at Richie, who only adjusts his glasses and beams back, Bev clears her throat loudly and asks, “So what’s the game plan here? We just gonna drink and watch you two wrestle? Because I watch enough wrestling with my little host brother as it is.”

“Actually, I figured we could watch a movie,” says Richie, rolling onto his back and sliding off the bed to go to his bag. “I brought some DVDs from Hammudeh we can play on my laptop.”

“Works for me,” says Ben, a little sleepily from the bed. “I’m just enjoying the company.”

“Wish I could say the same,” Eddie huffs, and hunches irritably when Richie ruffles his hair.

Together, they decide on a movie to watch. While Richie pops the disk into his laptop, Eddie stretches out his legs with a sigh and lurches to his feet, padding to the drink station.

“Mind toppin’ me up, too, Eds?” Richie calls, holding his empty cup aloft.

“Absolutely not.” But still Eddie leans over to take the cup.

“_Shukran, habibi_.”

When Eddie reaches the desk, he sighs, his shoulders slumping. “There’s no more ice,” he announces loudly, shoving his hand into the bucket and splashing the water around to prove his point. He stares at Richie as he does so, his eyebrows halfway up his forehead. The way his skin scrunches when he does it is even more pronounced now, like a little accordion, like those little ruffled pasta sheets that go in a lasagna.

“Probably because you used it all up, Spaghetti Head,” Richie says, grinning when Eddie glares at him.

“Yeah, but now it’s _gone_,” he says, as though that’s any proper response. He pulls his sopping hand out of the bucket and before Richie can even register the diabolical look on his face, Eddie leaps towards him and shoves his freezing cold hand down the back of Richie’s shirt.

“Agh! Jesus_ fuck, _Eds!” Richie shouts, jumping away. His back is cold and wet, and the water’s dripping down into his sweatpants. Eddie doubles over cackling.

“Can you guys stop dicking around and start the damn movie?” Bev calls from where she’s reclining on the second bed. Ben is next to her, looking half-asleep already. “I’m already like three drinks deep. Steve Carell is never going to lose his virginity at this rate.”

“But I need ice,” Eddie says firmly. He holds the empty bucket out to Richie. “Richie, could you go get more ice?”

Richie raises his eyebrows. “After you just poured most of that down my shirt? Fuck no.”

“But you’re the only one who knows where the ice machine is.”

“Yeah, because I can read a hotel sign, not because I’m fucking Magellan.”

Eddie sighs and cocks his hip. “C’mon, please? I won’t do it again, I promise,” he says, and he’s giving Richie the biggest, doe-iest eyes in the world and Richie hates to admit it but it’s fucking working. They stare each other down for a good few seconds. Then Eddie pouts out his bottom lip, his thin, perpetually ripped-up bottom lip, Richie’s eyes zero in on it like one of those Hitchcock shots, and some part of his brain is screaming, _WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON HE WAS JUST PISSED OFF AT YOU AND NOW HE’S— _but that part is quickly overcome by Richie’s stomach and dick and dumb old heart that are clamoring _KISS LICK SUCK KISS KISS KISS—_

So Richie sighs and yanks the bucket out of Eddie’s hands. “All right, _fine_,” he sighs, “I’ll get some more ice. But if any of it goes down my shirt this time, the whole bucket’s ending up on your head, Kaspbrak.”

Eddie smiles broadly, his eyes shining big and brown, and Richie hides his blush by practically running out of the room.

Richie actually had a hell of a time finding the ice machine the first time he went in search of it, so it’s probably good that Eddie’s not hunting for it, he tells himself. It’s on practically the opposite side of the building, and he feels like he’s basically journeyed to Mordor by the time he arrives again in the little vestibule. As he’s leaning on the button and watching the ice crash down painfully slowly, he feels a buzz in his back pocket.

**\--Ukhti [21:32]--  
**Fucking kiss already

Richie rolls his eyes. Like he hasn’t been aching to do it for the past two months. But at least now he can finally tease _Bev _about someone.

**\--Richie [21:34]--  
**U n haystack 1st  
**\--Ukhti [21:34]--  
**Fuq u  
**\--Ukhti [21:35]--  
**Srsly tho the sexual tension is embarassing

The bucket is nearly overflowing by now so Richie lets up. He shakes it with one hand so the ice settles, texting with the other.

**\--Richie [21:36]--  
**Idk wat u mean marsh, were all just bros being bros here  
**\--Ukhti [21:37]--  
**He just said he wished u were back already  
**\--Ukhti [21:37]--  
**Like a bro

Richie smiles and shoves the phone back in his pocket. He practically has tunnel vision as he power-walks back through the hotel hallway. He’s clutching the bucket of ice as hard as he can and all he can think is, _Don’t drop it you don’t wanna hafta go back for more don’t drop it good GOD don’t drop it_.

He finally arrives back at the door to their room, shifts the ice bucket to one arm, and slides his key card in the door. He pushes the door open to an exclamation and a flurry of motion. By the time he has turned to let the door close, Eddie has pounded across the room, suddenly close and smiling happily but a little uncertainly into Richie’s face.

“Took you long enough,” he says. He seems to be trying to sound annoyed, but it only comes out shy. He looks down at the bucket and slips his hand around the side so his fingers slides between the cool plastic and Richie’s ribs, tugging lightly.

Feeling heat creeping up his neck, Richie relinquishes it with a flourish. “Your ice, milord,” he says, bowing deeply. “Thy humble sah-vent hath brought thee ice for thy mah-gah-ree-tah.”

Eddie snaps his mouth shut tightly like he’s trying not to laugh, but a giggle bursts out anyway. “You’re such an idiot, Richie,” he says, turning away towards the desk.

Richie’s phone buzzes again, and he pulls it out.

**\--Ukhti [21:45]--  
**Like do u want me n ben to leave bc seriously wtf

Richie looks up at Bev. She’s sipping her drink and giving him _a look_, her eyebrows so far up her forehead they’re practically in her hair. He’s pretty sure his face turns bright red, and he shoves his phone back in his pocket. “Hey, Eds, could you whip me up one’a them margs, too?” he calls.

“That’s not my fucking name but sure.” Eddie picks up a new glass and shoves it into the bucket of ice. He nearly knocks the whole thing right over.

Richie snorts, coming up behind him. He swings an arm around Eddie’s shoulders and leans on him heavily. “You need some help there, Shortcake?”

“That’s _double_ not my fucking name, and no,” he retorts, but he doesn’t bat Richie’s arm away. In fact, Richie thinks he sees the hint of pink creeping over his cheeks. Eddie sloshes a hefty serving of tequila into the glass. A good amount of it ends up on the table.

“Yowza, Eddie, you’re wasting good tequila.”

“Why don’t you suck it up, then, Trashmouth?” Eddie says hotly. “Like the skating machine or whatever.”

“You mean a Zamboni?” Richie laughs hard, close to Eddie’s neck, and Eddie flinches, shrinking reflexively away, smiling.

“Richie, stop, that’s right in my ear.”

Richie ducks purposefully, purses his lips, and blows cool air at the shell of Eddie’s ear, until he shoves him away. “Get used to it,” Richie says, grinning, “you don’t have any hair to protect them now. They’re too tempting.”

“Just shut up and let me make your fucking drink,” Eddie grumbles, frowning in concentration at Richie’s cup, red staining his cheeks.

Richie decides to let up a little. He withdraws his arm from Eddie’s shoulders and turns around to lean his ass against the table, crossing his arms over his chest as he watches Eddie pour. “Wow, that’s quite the cocktail you’re putting together, there. You tryna get me drunk?” He makes his voice go low. “Are you going to take advantage of me, Mr. Kaspbrak?”

“You fucking wish,” Eddie says hotly. He finishes off the cup of tequila with what feels like only a splash of margarita mix and shoves it into Richie’s hand.

Richie takes an experimental sip and can’t stop himself from wincing. “Ay, caramba!” he exclaims, shuddering. “_That’ll_ put some hair on your chest!”

Eddie sips his own cup impassively, like he’s proving a point, although Richie thinks he sees his eyes squint at the formidable taste. “Like you need any more, you fucking Chewbacca,” he says.

“I meant you, Eds. Maybe this’ll finally kickstart puberty for you.”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“Can we _please_ watch the _fucking_ movie now?” Bev calls from the bed, and Richie jumps, reminded they’re not the only two in the room. “Ben’s already falling asleep, and I’m sick of the Richie and Eddie variety show.”

Ben blinks heavily at that. “I’m not falling asleep,” he protests weakly.

Bev pats his head tenderly. “It’s okay, _habibi_. We’re just here to watch a movie from 2005 that we’ve all seen before. You can go to sleep if you want.”

“Eddie hasn’t seen it.” Richie’s pushing the DVD into the slot on his laptop, his back to the others.

“Oh, my apologies,” Bev laughs. “Prince Eddie hasn’t seen it. How are we on ice, by the way? You have enough, Your Majesty?”

“I think it’ll be able to last us,” Richie hears Eddie say curtly, along with the squeak of bedsprings.

“And if it isn’t, Prince Eddie’s getting his own fucking ice this time,” Richie adds. He pulls up the DVD title screen and hits play.

“_Finally_,” Bev sighs. Ben lets out a quiet snore next to her.

Richie picks up his cup and turns back to the room. That’s when he fully understands the situation: Bev and Ben are solidly taking up one bed, and Eddie is now reclining against the headboard of the other, lazily resting his drink on his stomach as the opening credits roll. The expanse of the bedspread stretches out next to him, vast and inviting and scary as hell. Richie’s palms start to sweat.

He quickly weighs his other options. The uncomfortable hotel chair? The floor? Honestly, it would arouse more suspicion for Richie _not_ to sit on the bed. To make matters worse, Eddie looks utterly unconcerned about the seating arrangement; he’s just sipping on his signature cocktail, the basically-just-tequila, staring fixedly at the screen.

Still, though, Richie hesitates. If he sits on the same bed as Eddie to watch the movie, he’s probably going to fall asleep there, and he remembers what it was like sharing a bed in Palmyra: almost a total fucking disaster. It’s bad enough that Eddie clearly knows that Richie likes him now; he doesn’t need a repeat of Bonergate. But if he _doesn’t _sit on the bed with Eddie, that might be even _weirder_, and Eddie has been… like, it wouldn’t be all that presumptuous to say that Eddie has been _flirting_ tonight, right? And he keeps _looking_ at him, and _smiling_ at him, maybe Eddie actually _wants _him to—

“Hey, down in front,” Bev gripes, waving a hand at him. “Sit the fuck down, Richie, you’re blocking half the screen.”

Richie realizes that just standing there dumbly is yet another clue that the idea of sitting on the same bed as Eddie is not the _totally chill no-big-deal non-issue _that he’d like everyone to think it is. At the very least, he doesn’t want Eddie to see the look on his face. So he gets his first bright idea of the night and darts over to the entryway to flip off the lights, casting the room in darkness but for the glow of the laptop screen.

“Like a real movie thee-ay-tah!” he announces with a flourish of his arm.

“Shut up, dipshit, we’re trying to watch the movie.”

Richie does a very exaggerated sneaking motion across the room, reveling in Eddie and Bev’s yelling at him as he crosses the screen painstakingly slowly.

“If we were in a real ‘thee-ay-tah’, I’d be throwing popcorn at you, Tozier,” Bev groans.

Richie laughs and finally makes it over to the other side of the bed Eddie’s on. He sets his drink down on the table and flops down heavily on top of the mattress, jostling Eddie hard.

“Hey, watch it, asshole!” Eddie exclaims, sitting up abruptly and slamming his cup down on the bedside table, glaring down at his front. “Agh, what the fuck, Richie, you made me spill all over myself! I’m all wet!”

“Payback for the ice earlier, Spagheds,” Richie snickers ruthlessly.

“I’m _serious_, my shirt’s _soaked_.” Eddie pinches the fabric so it tents over his sternum. He’s silhouetted by the laptop, but Richie can tell he’s looking his way, presumably scowling deeply.

“What do you want me to do about it?”

“I don’t know, but I can’t sleep in this, it’s gonna get all sticky. You owe me another shirt.”

Bev sighs in the dark. “We’re never going to _actually _watch this movie, are we?”

“I don’t have any other shirts.”

“Didn’t you pack anything to wear tomorrow!?”

“Didn’t _you_? You’re the one who apparently can’t wear the same shirt two days in a row!”

“Not a _sticky_ shirt!”

Suddenly, Ben snorts and rolls over in his sleep. They all fall silent and freeze, not wanting to wake him, waiting statue-like until he settles and his breathing evens out once again.

After a moment, Bev leans over from the other bed. Richie can see in the dim light from the laptop screen that her eyes are wide, her mouth curled and gritted.

“Listen to me, you idiots,” she hisses. “I have had a very long, hard week. All I want to do is get drunk, watch a stupid movie about Steve Carell trying to get laid, and get a full night’s sleep in a bed with sheets that don’t have motherfucking _John Cena_ on them. So figure your shit out. _Quietly_.” With that, she settles back on the bed, staring forward at the screen.

Richie and Eddie are totally quiet on their bed. Richie’s not sure if either of them even breathes. Eddie settles back onto his pillows, still tenting the wet shirt over his chest with an exasperated huff. Richie hesitates for a moment… then sighs and does what he knew he would do all along.

He starts pulling his shirt off.

Eddie jerks when he notices Richie flailing his arms around in the dark. “What the fuck are you doing?” he whispers.

Richie pauses just long enough to hiss, “Giving you the shirt off my goddamn back, what does it fucking _look_ like I’m doing?” and then resumes wriggling out of it. After he finally yanks it over his head, his hair frizzing and crackling with static, he throws it at Eddie and settles back down on the bed, crossing his arms over his bare chest, his nipples hardening in the conditioned hotel air, and trying to pretend that watching a movie he could probably recite from memory is the most important thing in the world, that his every nerve is not fucking buzzing with anticipation as his shirt slides down Eddie’s chest to rumple in his lap.

For what feels like an hour to Richie, Eddie just lies on the bed, Richie’s shirt crumpled over his hips and forearms. Then he slowly sits up and starts inching the sleeves of his own shirt down over his arms, and suddenly Richie can hear his heart pounding in his ears and feel it throbbing in his dick because Eddie is seriously _taking his shirt off _and _putting Richie’s shirt on_ in front of him. It’s dark except for the flickering light from the laptop screen so he can’t see much of anything, but he can see the lines on Eddie’s shoulders and the tapered silhouette of his back before he pulls Richie’s shirt on over his head and Richie has to stick his hands into his armpits and clamp down hard to keep them from reaching out of their own accord to slide over Eddie’s skin in the dark hotel room.

Finally, Eddie leans back against the headboard, dressed again. Richie’s shirt is enormous on him; the sleeves reach practically to his elbows. His hair is slightly ruffled from pulling it over his head, shorn strands sticking up at his crown like dandelion fluff. Even in the dark room, he looks adorable. He looks fucking hot.

“Thanks, man,” Eddie mumbles.

“Yeah, no problem,” Richie croaks back. “Bro.” He’s sure Bev is rolling her eyes so far into the back of her head that they’re never going to face front again.

After that, they really do quiet down and watch the movie. Richie isn’t sure if he moves a muscle for the entire two-hour runtime, but he is painfully aware of Eddie’s every chuckle and fidget. About halfway through the movie, Eddie starts idly fiddling with the hem of the overlarge shirt, twisting it in his fingers where it sits just above his abdomen. The movement draws Richie’s eyes away from the screen, and he can’t help thinking about reaching over and placing his hand over Eddie’s to still it. If he were braver, he would. If he were braver, their eyes would meet in the semi-darkness, Eddie’s breath would catch in his throat and he’d look at him quizzically.

“You’re stretching out my favorite shirt, Eds,” Richie’d whisper.

“Oh. Sorry,” Eddie would say quietly, because he’d be too surprised by Richie’s hot hand over his to retort like usual.

Richie would move his hand, but not off Eddie’s. No, he’d entangle their fingers together and say, “It’s okay. It looks good on you.” Somehow he’d be able to see Eddie blushing even in the dark. “But it’d look better on the floor.”

No, no, _no_, too lame, Eddie would never go for it, not even in Richie’s imagination. He can do better. What about—

“I think my mouth would look good on you, too.”

Hm, better. Or at least, more original. But it makes Richie think of all the places he could put his mouth on Eddie, and that’s an express ticket to Boner Junction, a place he really can’t afford to make a trip to right now. What about—

“Everything looks good on you, Eds.”

Yeah, yeah, that’s good. Relatively innocent, and sincere as fuck. And then Eddie would blush even deeper, maybe his eyebrows would knit together a little in confusion, like he thinks maybe Richie’s messing with him. “Shut up, Richie,” he’d mumble, but his eyes would still be wide, flitting from Richie’s face to their entwined hands.

“Make me,” Richie would say with a smile, and lean in, watching Eddie’s lips part slowly and his eyelids flutter shut as—

“I think Bev’s asleep.”

Richie jerks out of his reverie. The movie’s over—credits are rolling—and Eddie’s looking at him in surprise, like he didn’t expect to startle Richie quite so badly. Richie leans up on his elbows to squint at Bev in the darkness. She’s curled up under the sheets, her eyes closed and her mouth open slightly. Ben’s next to her on top of the covers, seemingly dead to the world.

“Good,” Richie says, falling back to the bed, “let’s not wake the kraken.”

They sit in silence for a moment, watching the credits roll.

“What now?” Eddie asks quietly in the dark. His voice seems weirdly thin, breathy. It sets Richie’s pulse racing.

“I dunno,” he answers, just as quietly. “I have more movies. Or we could just go to sleep.”

“I’m not really tired.”

“Yeah. Me neither.”

Silence.

Richie swallows. “So… another movie?”

Eddie shrugs, still winding the hem of Richie’s shirt in between his fingers. “If you want to.”

_What the fuck does _that _mean? _Richie wonders helplessly. He’s not an idiot; he knows what “I’m not tired, but I don’t care what we do” normally means. It means, _Put a movie on, who cares what, we won’t really be watching._ But this is _Eddie_. Eddie who has ignored him for almost three days after Richie spilled his guts all over the lacquered, dark-wood table beneath the signed photo of Sean Connery. And Richie thought that was a pretty fucking clear message of how Eddie felt: not interested, not even as friends, not anymore. Let him down not easy but hard, cold. Brutal.

But then Eddie showed up tonight with a new haircut and apparently a whole new attitude because he has barely let Richie get more than four feet from him since he arrived. Other than to go get ice. Which Eddie flirted with him to get. An itch creeps up Richie’s spine, tingling into the hair at the back of his head. Eddie knows how he feels, must know by now that Richie would do anything for him—give him brand-new ice, the shirt off his back, whatever, _anything_. Is this all just a fucking test? Pushing him to the limit to see where how far he goes? Richie feels a little sick at the thought. He doesn’t think Eddie would do that, but Richie is no stranger to being jerked around, to seeing a person through rose-colored glasses until they rip them off his face themselves and crush them under their heel. Maybe it’s some energy he gives off, some pheromone. Something that screams, _Please, take advantage of me! I’m desperate for love and not picky about how I get it!_ Carla would probably say it’s because he’s a Pisces—_has _said it’s because he’s a Pisces, in fact, and some other shit about how the moon says that in this life he’s supposed to _embrace setting boundaries _or whatever the fuck, but…

Sometimes he doesn’t _want _to set boundaries. Sometimes he just wants to fall head over heels for someone and feel fucking good when that person reciprocates even one-tenth, one-hundredth of how he feels. That’s fine, right? He can do that. He’s a grown-ass adult, he can make his own self-destructive decisions if he wants to. He can tell Eddie that he wants to be treated nicely one night and then three days later give him the literal shirt off his back just to feel the satisfaction of fulfilling Eddie’s needs. He can burrow his fingers into his own ribcage, wrench his still-beating heart from the veins and arteries binding it in his chest cavity, and show it, dripping, to Eddie, and if Eddie’s response isn’t to pull out his own, just as bloody, but instead is just detachedly to study Richie’s whirring, leaking lifeblood, muse on what he could do with a whole heart, on how he can make that heart work for _him_, that’s… fine. Not ideal, obviously, but Eddie is giving him crumbs. He can live on crumbs.

For two more months, anyway, he can live on crumbs.

Richie pushes himself off the bed with a grunt and pads over to the laptop. Getting off the bed reminds him that he’s shirtless in only his old, threadbare sweatpants. The air conditioning in the room is blasting; he shivers under the vent. He rubs a hand up and down his goosebumped arm as he leans over the laptop screen, closing out of the DVD menu and navigating to his movie downloads folder.

“Anything in particular?” Richie asks quietly, testing.

After a moment, Eddie shrugs in the darkness. “Whatever you want.”

_Put a movie on, who cares what, we won’t really be watching._

“Probably fall asleep anyway, right?” Richie says dryly as he double-clicks without even looking at the file name. He’s freezing and wants to get under the covers ASAP. He darts back over to his side of the bed, yanks the covers back, and slides between them, pulling them up practically to his chin. As he settles into the bed, he sees the movie title appear.

It’s _I Love You, Man_.

He has to suppress a snort. _What would they call this? _he wonders. _A Freudian click?_

Richie warms up quickly under the covers, which provide the added benefit of a boner buffer, in case Eddie decides to do any more impromptu stripping. Eddie, for his part, seems engrossed in the movie, staring at the screen, motionless but for the mindless, endless twisting of his fingers through the shirt. Richie watches the movement of Eddie’s hands, eyelids drooping under the warmth of the comforter.

To his surprise, he’s actually beginning to relax, as the minutes go on without any more sudden moves from Eddie. Maybe getting a wink of sleep could actually be possible, even with Eddie in the same bed. He takes off his glasses, sets them on the bedside table, and curls up facing the screen, even though he can’t see shit.

They get maybe fifteen minutes into the movie before Eddie sits up, quietly says he’s going to brush his teeth, and pads away into the bathroom. Richie simply hums, allowing his eyelids to drift shut.

He’s jolted awake by the rustle of covers. Eddie has pulled them back on the other side of the bed and is sliding under them.

_Shit._

Richie’s entire body is suddenly electrified. He keeps his eyes trained straight ahead on the screen as Eddie settles in. He curls up on his side, his back to Richie, which is good, because Richie’s sure his expression would give away just how much feeling Eddie’s body heat under the covers is affecting him. Eddie knows how Richie feels about him, but Richie doesn’t need him to see the evidence quite so blatantly. Richie feels like he’s suddenly burning up. Is he sweating?

Eddie doesn’t give him much of a reprieve, either. He keeps fidgeting under the covers, like he can’t get comfortable. Richie hopes he settles down soon; he can’t afford to have Eddie’s hand accidentally brushing up against anything if he wants to be able to look him in the eyes ever again.

After a few seconds of Eddie adjusting and readjusting, Richie hears him let out an annoyed huff. In spite of himself, Richie can’t stop his own answering chuckle; irritated Eddie is just too cute.

“What’s up?”

“The sheets are a little sticky where you made me spill.”

“Nah, that’s just from when I was doing your mom earlier.”

“Ugh, shut the fuck up,” Eddie hisses, a little loud in the quiet room.

“Hey, what’d I say about waking the kraken? You really wanna face her John Cena-sheets-fueled wrath?”

Eddie huffs again but doesn’t say anything else. Instead he scoots closer to Richie on the bed, until he’s almost in the center of it. He looks at Richie out of the corner of his eye when he’s settled down, and Richie’s eyes must be as big as saucers because Eddie mumbles, “I’m just getting out of the spill.”

“Oh, okay.” It comes out as a croak.

They fall silent again. Paul Rudd meets Jason Segal. Eddie snorts at Jason Segal’s character’s pug named Anwar Sadat. “A reference I actually get,” he says.

“Yeah,” Richie chuckles. “Kinda fucked up, though, naming your dog after someone who was assassinated. Like imagine, ‘This is my Labradoodle, JFK. He’s a rescue.’”

Eddie snorts.

Richie grins. “‘Who’s a good thirty-fifth president? Is it you? I think it is!’”

Eddie’s laughing, now, quietly; Richie can feel him shaking in the bed.

“‘Sit, boy. Stay. Roll over. Authorize the Bay of Pigs invasion.’”

A peal of laughter escapes Eddie’s lips as he cracks up, quickly covering his mouth and turning his face into the pillow to muffle himself.

“Watch it, Eds, you’re shaking the whole bed,” Richie whispers, chuckling. “The people in the next room are gonna think I’m in here with your mom again.”

“So… so stupid, Rich,” Eddie breathes, wiping at his eyes as he slowly calms down. He giggles a few more times, irregularly, like aftershocks, before he finally falls quiet.

In the growing, comfortable silence, Richie smiles and even feels his eyelids drifting shut again. It’s nice to know some things don’t change; even if Eddie knows Richie is crazy about him, Richie can still get some good chucks outta Eds.

“Hey, Richie?”

“Hmm.”

“…Could you rub my back?”

Richie’s eyes snap open. They’ve adjusted to the darkness by now, and he can vaguely make out Eddie’s shape. He’s lying on his side, facing away, his neck craned so he can whisper over his shoulder. He’s close, nearly in the middle of the bed; Richie wouldn’t even have to straighten his arm to reach his back, his shoulders, the newly shorn hair on the back of his neck.

Richie’s mouth is bone dry. He swallows roughly. “Your back?”

“Yeah. Like you did in Palmyra? It… felt nice.”

Richie licks his lips, grasping for a joke. “Why, Eds, you anxious?” he chuckles.

“A little.”

Richie’s eyebrows twitch. “Why?”

Eddie huffs, turns his head back to rest on the pillow. “If you don’t want to do it, you can just say no.”

“N-no, that’s not—” Richie swallows again—his mouth is so fucking _dry _all of a sudden—and instead of talking, for once, just _moves_. Slowly, he shifts, reaching out his hand, fingertips trembling, until they come into contact with the loose fabric of his own shirt, draped over Eddie’s shoulder blades. He pushes through it until he makes contact with the warm solidity of Eddie’s back, pressing along his spine with first his fingers and then the length of his thumb and, finally, the hot flat of his sweating palm. He drags it in a rough, light circle.

“_Mm_,” says Eddie, and Richie’s dick twitches in his underwear.

He swallows for a third fucking time, his heart a jackhammer in his chest, and slowly trails his fingers down Eddie’s spine, smoothing along the notches of his vertebrae. The cotton of his shirt is draping over his wrist, getting in the way. He almost wants to ask Eddie to take it off, but then he rakes his fingernails over the small of Eddie’s back, and Eddie arches and whines and Richie’s cock fucking _throbs_ as one big surge of blood pumps into it, filling out hot against his thigh.

“Does that feel good?” he asks hoarsely.

Eddie nods, and Richie thrills, hearing the _swish swish _of Eddie’s cheek along the pillowcase. So Richie turns his hand heel-up and drags his fingertips just as slowly back up Eddie’s spine. The fabric bunches between his fingers, slowing the drag, so he extricates his other hand from beneath his pillow and uses it to grasp the hem and pull it down taut, his knuckles brushing against the bare skin of Eddie’s side as he does. Eddie jumps, jolting the bed. Richie’s heart throbs, adrenaline flooding him.

“Sorry,” Richie mumbles quickly, focusing on the slide of his fingers beside Eddie’s vertebrae.

“’Sfine,” Eddie responds. His whisper turns into a vibratory hum as Richie’s fingernails scratch at the short, bristly hair at his nape.

Richie licks his lips. “You like that?”

“Mm.” Eddie nods again, more exaggeratedly this time when he seems to realize that he can use the motion to push Richie’s fingertips along his scalp.

“Yeah, so do I,” Richie confesses, breathless, his fingers sliding through what’s left of Eddie’s hair, over the irregularities of his skull. “Feels nice, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah… magic fingers, right?” And there’s a playfulness in his voice that makes Richie huff out a laugh.

The laugh dies in his throat, though, when Eddie abruptly shifts, turning his head towards Richie, and then his shoulders and chest and whole body follow, twisting beneath the sheets. Richie pulls back his hands, his pulse racing, and waits unbreathing until Eddie stops moving. It’s dark and he doesn’t have his glasses, but he doesn’t need to be able to _see_ to know that Eddie is close, inches from him, not when he can _feel_ his body radiating heat, _hear_ him breathing, _smell_ the mint of his mouth—

“_Sabah an-na‘naa‘_,” Richie blurts out.

Eddie freezes. Then he laughs, breathily, seeming incredulous. “What?”

“Your toothpaste,” is all the explanation Richie can muster.

“Oh.” Eddie’s hand slides under the sheets. Richie thinks he moves it to cover his mouth. “You can smell it?”

Richie nods helplessly. “Yeah. ’Snice,” he murmurs, and then clenches his eyes shut, wanting to kick himself. His hands are bundled together close to his pounding chest, and he’s trying desperately not to overstep, not to reach out, even though there can be little doubt now that that’s what Eddie wants him to do. Right?

But what if it’s not?

Then Eddie swallows—he’s so close that Richie can _hear him_ _swallow_—and begins to move again, his arm sliding under the covers to free itself, a darker shadow against the white of the comforter, and the next second Richie feels fingers brush his neck, his ear, and then push into the thick, curly hair at the nape of his neck.

He inhales sharply, his eyes flying open. “Eddie—”

“I don’t really know what I’m doing,” Eddie says quietly as he works his fingers through Richie’s hair, lightly scraping his scalp. His breath puffs warm in Richie’s face, liquefying his bones.

“I don’t care,” Richie replies, barely more than a whisper. Eddie’s finger catches a tangle, and the sharp tug makes Richie bite back a gasp, his eyes fluttering shut. His breathing is growing labored, blood rushing in his veins, pooling hot in his stomach, making his whole body _burn_. He clenches his hands against his chest, trying hard not to move, silent but for the sound of Eddie’s fingernails on his scalp.

Eddie moves his fingers slowly over Richie’s head, shooting tingles zinging down his spine, into his stomach, his fingertips, the arches of his feet. Eddie begins to slide his hand lower, down the back of Richie’s neck, sloping onto his shoulder, his _bare _shoulder, _Eddie is touching his bare skin_, and Richie’s heart jumps into his throat; he tries desperately to swallow around it, but his mouth is utterly dry.

Then Eddie presses his fingertips into the meat of Richie’s shoulder, drumming them hard and slow along the muscle, and Richie can’t hide the gasp that forces out of him. Eddie is so close it’s like Richie sucks in the last breath he let out, cool with mint.

“Good?” Eddie asks, uncertain.

Richie nods feverishly against the pillowcase—_swish swish swish_. “Y-yeah.”

“Good.” There’s a smile in his voice as he does it again, and Richie bites back a groan.

He ducks his head on the pillow, so Eddie’s breath puffs over his forehead now. He’s _itching_ to touch Eddie, entire body beginning to tremble with the effort to hold himself still. “Eddie, I—”

“You can keep going, too,” Eddie mumbles, inching his fingers over Richie’s shoulder, down his bare back.

Richie blinks his eyes open at that, unbelieving, as he raises his head again. Eddie is a dark, close, enigmatic shadow, taking up nearly his whole vision, and Richie’s stomach twists hotly, wringing itself like a rag soaked in scalding water. He extricates one hand from the tight knot of fingers at his chest and reaches under the covers until his knuckles knock into Eddie’s stomach. It’s firmer, more solid, than he thought it would be, which nearly makes his eyes cross, but Eddie’s hand spasms a little on his shoulder blade at the contact so he pushes past it, sliding his palm over Eddie’s side again to the small of his back. He tries to drag and press his hand over the fabric of the shirt like he did before, wants even more now to draw those humming whines from Eddie’s throat, taste them on his breath, but Eddie’s fingers are playing over his spine, sending goosebumps over his bare skin, and the angle is wrong, he can’t quite… if they were only a few inches…

“Come— come closer,” he pants, his face burning, and flattens his palm against the center of Eddie’s back. Eddie lets out a little, grunted _oh _as Richie yanks him forward another inch, another two inches, and his face is _so _close now, their noses nearly brushing, heads resting on the same long, downy pillow. Blood is screaming in Richie’s ears and before he can second-guess it, he snakes his fingers under the hem of his too-big shirt and splays his hand against the small of Eddie’s back, smooth and warm. Eddie sucks in air, sharp through his nose. His nails scrabble at Richie’s scapulae.

This time the angle is good; Richie can slide nearly his whole forearm up the back of the shirt, which bunches at his elbow. His fingers rake along the bare, heated skin of Eddie’s muscles and spine, and he’s pretty sure Eddie’s breath is coming out in heavy pants, now; would be positive if his weren’t doing the same.

Eddie licks his lips, and Richie knows that because he _hears _it—the wetness, the click his lips as they part, the sound of his breath when his mouth changes shape—and Richie also knows, he _knows_ (he’s… ninety-_nine_ percent sure), that Eddie wants to kiss him.

There have been times before—after Bev’s birthday; in Palmyra; hell, even outside the visa office—when he thought _maybe_. This is no maybe. This he can feel burning in his gut, searing and bubbling and beginning to boil. He licks his own lips, wondering if it’s as clear to Eddie as it is to him, if all Eddie needs is encouragement, if he’s waiting for Richie to make the first move, and so Richie— and so Richie—

And so Richie lays his whole palm against Eddie’s upper back, between his shoulder blades, and, his heart battering itself furiously against his chest, he presses lightly, urging him forward.

He knows Eddie feels it, the slight but steady pressure of Richie’s hand, because his breath catches in his throat, a stutter in the cascade of hot, heavy air over Richie’s mouth and neck as Eddie allows himself to be pulled even closer, the distance crossed not in inches or centimeters but in millimeters, in atoms.

Then Eddie slides his own hand back up to cup around the nape of Richie’s neck and begins to press, himself.

Their hands are no longer rubbing or sliding over flushed, singing skin; only pressing, only pulling softly, inexorably, breath hitching as they near each other. And Richie knows it’s coming, but when the tip of his nose brushes Eddie’s, electricity still rockets down his spine, sparking beneath Eddie’s palm, and he still sucks in a gulp of air, still exhales shuddering over Eddie’s near, near lips: “Eddie, I don’t—”

“Richie— please just—” Eddie breathes, and tugs once more on his neck as Richie’s hand twitches and jerks at his back, and at last their mouths slot together, wet and hot and wanting as they plunge into each other.

Richie is vibrating, boiling over, Eddie a hot brand laid against him, Eddie head to toe along him, Eddie in his arms, Eddie in his _arms_ and _kissing_ him. Richie grasps at him helplessly, desperately, clutching him closer, snaking his arm all the way under his billowy shirt so his hand emerges out the collar, cradling the back of his fuzzy head, using the entire length of his forearm to crush Eddie’s chest to his. Eddie’s mouth is minty and wet as Richie licks at his lip, at his bottom lip, _at_ _Eddie’s bottom lip_, always so raw and ripped up, sucking it hard between his teeth so he can lave it, soothe it with his tongue, even though he’s suddenly aching to bite it himself.

And Eddie— Eddie is— Eddie is kissing him _back_, just as desperate, just as hungry. With his bottom lip in Richie’s mouth, he runs his tongue over Richie’s top lip, teeth grazing, kissing the stubbly skin beneath his nose. The heel of his hand digs into Richie’s cheek, tugging him forward, and he moves his lips fiercely against Richie’s, breath puffing hot and fast.

Richie’s head is spinning, coherent thought quickly spiraling and sinking, subsumed by _feel kiss lick bite touchtouchtouch_. Dizzily, tenderly, he licks at Eddie’s tongue, overcome by the warm, wet slide of it against his, the taste, the feel, the fact that it belongs to Eddie. He moans softly against Eddie’s mouth, the noise coming more from his nose than his throat, and Eddie’s fingertips twitch beside his ear. Licking behind his teeth, Richie slides his hand from the side of Eddie’s head, rough and dragging along his neck, his shifting muscles, his winging shoulder blades, trying now not only to _give _but also to _take_, take and feel and memorize how Eddie is warm and writhing beneath his palm, because the one coherent thought left in his head is, _I_ _don’t know if this will happen again_.

Then Eddie whimpers and shifts against him, and Richie releases Eddie’s tongue with a muted grown, because his hard cock is suddenly pressed against Eddie’s thigh, which would be a lot more embarrassing if not for the rigid line of Eddie’s throbbing against Richie’s bare, burning stomach.

Richie tears his lips from Eddie’s with a gasp. “Oh, _fuck_.”

“Richie, I—”

“_Eds_,” Richie growls and yanks Eddie back to him, crushing their lips together. He slides his hand to press against the hinge of Eddie’s jaw, coaxing his mouth open with the pad of his thumb and the press of his lips, and when Eddie’s mouth sighs open, he slides his tongue back inside, tasting him and moaning quietly, deliriously, as Eddie curls around him, his hand fisting in Richie’s hair.

Feeling Eddie hard against him is _doing _things to Richie, splintering his self-control, spurring him to leave Eddie’s mouth to kiss along his chin and jaw and throat, and Eddie only pants and bares his neck for Richie’s lips, his fingers twisting hard into Richie’s hair. The collar of Richie’s shirt is old and stretched out, revealing the white of Eddie’s collarbone in the hazy dark, and Richie sucks on it, half his mouth against the threadbare cotton until, grunting in frustration, he snakes his arm back out through it to bunch the fabric up around Eddie’s armpits, revealing the expanse of his chest, flat and dusted lightly with hair near the two darker smears of Eddie’s nipples. He bends his head to lick beside one, tangling his legs with Eddie’s, tasting the difference between the firm skin of Eddie’s pec and the softer flesh of his nipple when his tongue flicks over it, his arm winding around the small of Eddie’s back as Eddie gasps and bucks against him.

Desperate, burning for more, for _response_, Richie slides lower on the bed until his face is pressed against Eddie’s chest, his arms coiled tightly around Eddie’s waist, his mouth wet and open against Eddie’s ribs, his sternum, kissing at him sloppily, drunkenly, like if he can tongue against him hard enough, he can lick into Eddie’s heart. He scrapes teeth over a taut nipple, and Eddie’s hand spasms in his hair, fisting so hard it makes Richie groan and rut his throbbing cock along Eddie’s thigh.

Then Eddie is tugging, yanking at Richie’s hair, so his mouth leaves Eddie’s chest with a wet noise and he cranes his neck up just in time for Eddie to breathe _Richie, c’mere, _into his mouth before Eddie’s lips land on his, Eddie kissing down into him, _onto_ him, fierce and needy, jaw working hard like he’s proving a point, like he’s arguing with him.

Willingly, Richie submits to him, crawling back up the bed until they’re face to face again, kisses still hard but becoming hazier, sloppier. Richie runs his palm roughly up and down Eddie’s side, his hip, his lower back, itching increasingly to slide forward and cup the hard length of Eddie’s dick through his cotton shorts, which Eddie is slowly, shakily, dragging along Richie’s stomach with every jerky kick of his hips.

Instead, Richie shifts his other hand, searching blindly beneath the pillows until it knocks against Eddie’s. He grasps it, pulls it towards him, covering the back of Eddie’s smaller hand with his long fingers, his thumb cradled in Eddie’s palm, until his hand is just before his face. Softly at first, unable to help himself, Richie turns away from Eddie’s mouth to press his lips to Eddie’s knuckles, thinking of how he wanted to that day in Palmyra. He wonders what would have been Eddie’s reaction that day, in that hotel room, in stark, broad daylight without the benefit of alcohol to loosen their limbs. Did Eddie suspect then how Richie wanted him? Did he know? Did he pretend not to know?

Well, Richie’s chips are all in, now. There’s no point leaving anything on the table.

He opens his mouth and sucks wetly on Eddie’s knuckles, slides his tongue around and between them and down to the thin webbing where they meet his palm. He hears Eddie gasp, feels his fingers twitch beneath his lips. Then they flex and shift, straighten, and Eddie presses them hesitantly into Richie’s mouth.

Eagerly, Richie sucks them in. He folds his tongue over them, between them, as he grips Eddie’s wrist tightly, holding him there, hearing only the wet, needy sounds his tongue is making and Eddie’s deep, labored breaths.

Then he begins to move his other hand from Eddie’s waist, sliding over his side, his firm stomach, feeling the coarse trail of hair there that he is desperate to mouth over, and follows it down to press his palm hard over the rigid line of Eddie’s cock. Eddie inhales sharply through his noise, so sharply it nearly whistles, and Richie lets his eyes roll open. In the dark, without his glasses, all he can see are the deeper shadows of Eddie’s eyes boring back into his, but Eddie— _Eddie_ can see. And so he tries to tell him with his eyes and tongue and hand: _I want to do _this—as he cradles and sucks at his fingers—_to you _here—as he rubs and presses at his cock, which throbs beneath his palm.

Eddie’s fingers twitch on Richie’s tongue, his chest heaving alongside Richie’s. The hand not in Richie’s mouth untangles itself slowly from Richie’s hair to slide down to his shoulder, his bicep, and grips hard, and Richie thinks, _That’s it, he’s going to fling my arm off him, he’s going to leave_, _he’s going to leave me,_ but Eddie only holds Richie’s arm where it is and, his eyes unreadable darkness, bucks his hips strongly against Richie’s palm.

The moan Richie lets out is muffled around his fingers, and Eddie’s answering one is strangled, as well. Richie opens his bleary, unfocused eyes to stare into the indecipherable shadow of Eddie’s face. He hears Eddie’s breath stutter in his chest as he encircles Eddie’s cock with his hand as best he can through his cotton shorts.

“O-_ohh_,” Eddie chokes out, sighing into his face, and Richie’s brain melts, trickles down his spine to pool somewhere near his tailbone, leaving only that one, barbed, crystallized thought:

_I don’t know if this will happen again._

His stomach twists painfully, and he tries to put it aside because right now Eddie is still in bed before him, his fingers are still buried in Richie’s mouth and his cock is still a scalding iron in Richie’s hand, and Richie… Richie knows that what he wants to do more than anything is make sure that this is good for Eddie, that this is as good as it can be for Eddie.

_I_ _don’t know if this will happen again. So I’d better make it fucking good._

Slowly, forcing himself to focus, he begins to rub at Eddie’s dick. The fabric of the shorts is thin enough that he can feel all of him, and he feels dizzyingly perfect: the thick vein running the length of the underside, the flare of the head, the fact that he’s—Richie whines softly around Eddie’s fingers, nearly gagging—he’s _damp_, not soaked through the cotton but still obvious from the drag of Richie’s skin over the faux-fly, the broad ties of the shorts, and Eddie—_Eddie it’s_ _Eddie_—is pressing forward into Richie’s palm, his fingers curling hard on Richie’s tongue, dragging his jaw down until they pop out of his mouth entirely and Eddie captures his lips in his again, shaking and sloppy. Richie kisses him back, circles his fingers around the head and squeezes, and Eddie whimpers into his mouth.

Eddie’s wet fingers trail over Richie’s throat and around his neck and down his chest, while his other arm snakes around Richie’s shoulders, and Eddie levers himself against Richie, so they’re pressed along each other again but for Richie’s forearm pinned between them, his hand sliding awkwardly around Eddie’s clothed dick.

_Make it fucking good_.

Breathing hard, Richie hooks his fingers into the waistband of Eddie’s shorts. He pulls back an inch from Eddie’s mouth to pant, “Can I?”

“Uh.” Eddie swallows, licks his lips. Then Richie surges forward to lick them, too, and Eddie whines and nods frantically against Richie’s mouth, his hand flying down Richie’s arm to join his, shoving the shorts down until Richie feels Eddie’s hard, soaking cock bob free, smearing his wrist with precome.

“Fuck,” Richie gasps, gripping it. He gives it a few slick strokes that have Eddie writhing against him already. “_Fuck_, I wanna suck you off so bad, Eds,” he confesses, his lips pressed heavily to the side of Eddie’s mouth.

“I— Bev… and Ben—”

“I know, I know, you’re right—” Richie breaks his lips away from Eddie’s face, just for a moment, and Eddie breathes hard into the space between them as Richie brings his hand to his mouth and spits into his palm.

“Jesus, Richie, you’re so— _hahh_—” and Eddie gasps when Richie slides his spit-slick hand over the smooth head of his cock.

“Gross?” Richie supplies in a whisper, twisting his hand so the palm is running over the underside, making Eddie’s fingernails dig hard into his shoulder. “I know, you told me so on our date. ‘The bacteria.’”

“Wasn’t a— _hngh—_”

“Wasn’t a date, I know,” Richie pants and fists Eddie’s cock, pumping it from base to tip, because what a fucking Eddie thing to say.

Eddie’s cock is hard and smooth and wet in his hand, and Eddie is swiftly beginning to tremble in his arms, against his mouth, as Richie does all he can to take him apart. He twists his wrist on the upstroke, he runs his thumb over the slit, he circles his fingers underneath the flared crown of the head and drags them over it, squeezing, and Eddie whimpers, sucking weakly on his tongue, slowly shattering.

“Richie—” Eddie’s breath is hitching in his throat, and his tone goes harsh at the end, like a warning. Like Richie doesn’t know what’s going to happen. Like Richie isn’t _dying _for it to happen.

“Yeah?” he still pants, wanting to hear him say it.

“I’m_—_ I’m getting—”

“Yeah, yeah, you are, fuck,” Richie breathes, and he can _feel _how Eddie’s growing even harder in his hand, how Eddie’s thighs are twitching and flexing beneath the sheets.

Eddie’s fingers scrabble back up his neck, burying themselves in his hair. “Richie,” he gasps, frantic, “there’s nowhere for it to—”

“I got you, Eds, don’t worry, I got you, just let go, just— yeah, like that, like _that_, Eds, oh, _fuck_—”

And then Eddie inhales sharply through his nose and moans into Richie’s mouth, and Richie swiftly brings his other hand down to cup around the head of Eddie’s dick, and the next moment Eddie convulses and tears his lips from Richie’s to bury his face in the pillow and whines as he pumps his cock through the tight circle of Richie’s fist, hot come spilling over his thumb and knuckles and his waiting palm. Richie collects as much of it as he can, trying to avoid it dripping on the bedsheets, jerking Eddie softly through it as he shudders next to him, gasping.

When Eddie’s breathing has evened, and Richie’s cupped hand is warm and full of him, Richie slowly removes his hand from Eddie’s sticky cock. Carefully, he pulls his filthy hands from under the covers, rolling reluctantly away from the furnace of Eddie’s shivering body.

Eddie lifts his head when the sheets rustle around Richie and grunts inquiringly.

“I’m just gonna, uh…”

“Mm,” Eddie replies, his face already pressed back into the pillows.

Richie stumbles across the hotel room, his cock rock-fucking-hard and waving in his soaking boxers as he pads as lightly as he can across the threadbare carpet to the bathroom. It’s pitch black when he closes the door behind him, so he nudges at the wall with his elbow until he hits the switch and then winces hard at the fluorescent overhead light, blinding him.

He squints down at his hands, and he can’t really see—no glasses, painful light—but he catches a glimpse of the translucent white pooled in his left palm, the spatters over the knuckles of his right, before he has to close his eyes again. His stomach swoops.

_Eddie’s come_, he thinks dizzily. _I made_ _Eddie come_.

Head spinning, heat spiking through him, he lifts his right hand to his face. Slowly, he opens his mouth and slides his tongue over his sticky-coated knuckles.

It’s bitter. It’s nothing special. He moans, smearing his lips.

It’s driving him insane.

His knees buckle, and he slides down the closed door, his legs folding in front of him like paper. His dick is throbbing between them, painfully hard in his tented boxers, and he clumsily unbuttons the fly with his right hand, licked clean, to allow the thick head to push through. He’s wet like he was in Palmyra; wetter, probably, but it’s hard to tell when he grips it with a hand that’s already soaked and sticky with the mess he made of Eddie, and he has to bite his cheek hard to keep from groaning at the thought.

Then, deciding there’s nothing else for it, he upends his left hand, watching through one squinted eye as Eddie’s come drips from his overturned palm onto the head of his cock.

_Jesus, Richie, you’re so— _

Richie chokes back a moan as he begins to jerk himself hard. It’s wet and sloppy and _loud_, the sounds echoing in the bathroom over his strangled gasps, and there’s no reason to draw it out, not when he’s so close, not when he’s fucking up into his fist soaked with Eddie’s come with Eddie’s come that he wrung out of him with this hand with _this_ hand that was on Eddie’s face and stomach and cock and Eddie said _Richie please just _and kissed him and Richie comes hard, forcing his bleary eyes open so he can watch his hips pumping up into the same fist that Eddie fucked, his own come spilling over the wet, white mess that Eddie left, his brain mush but for _Eddie Eddie Eddie_—

When he pulls his hands away from his cock, he has to gather the mingled come carefully, trying to avoid it dripping over the only boxers he has here. He stands shakily, stars blinking behind his eyes, and totters to the sink to clean his hands and dick. The come coating his hands slowly sloughs away with soap and warm water, swirling down the drain.

When Richie returns to the dark room, his eyes have so adjusted to the light of the bathroom that he is helpless. He stumbles, holding his wet hands out to catch himself against anything, until he finds the far bed and falls back into it.

Eddie groans lightly at the movement, shifting only slightly where he is, face-down in the pillows. Richie swallows and looks at him in the dark, his heart giving a valiant, painful kick against his ribs.

_I don’t know if this will happen again._

With his last ounce of the boldness rapidly leaking away through the cracks in his bones, Richie crawls under the covers and slides across the mattress to fold himself around Eddie’s sleep-loose body. He’s warm and soft in Richie’s arms, feels so good against him that Richie can’t help but curl closer. He abruptly, achingly, wants to cry.

It’s Eddie_. _He’s holding Eddie.

Instead, he buries his nose behind Eddie’s ear, his short hair tickling his face, and inhales deeply, smelling mint and tequila and sweat and, underneath it all, that fresh, springtime shampoo that he remembers from Syria. He closes his eyes, hoping with a painful stab in his dumb heart he’ll be able to catch even a wink of sleep, that in the morning, things will be just as bright as they were in the dark of night. That it _will_ happen again.

***

In the morning, Eddie is gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FINALLY!!!!
> 
> thank you to [@jajs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jajs/pseuds/jajs) for the beta read! _looks like we maaade iiiiit_. also she’s about to drop some HOT swanqueen fanart at some point so if you’re in the need of an f/f fix please check her stuff out.
> 
> also thanks to kayla and the horse cock rights gc for all the encouragement always. i love you all!!
> 
> feel free to come talk at me on twitter! i’m [@tempestbreak_](https://twitter.com/tempestbreak_).
> 
> Arabic glossary:  
_full_: jasmine  
_fuul_: a dish involving stewed fava beans  
_hifla_: party  
_na‘naa‘_: mint  
_sabah al-kheir_: good morning  
_sabah an-noor_: good morning [typical response to _sabah al-kheir_]  
_ward_: rose


	17. march iii: my words stumble before i start

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from “in for the kill” by la roux

Eddie is gone.

Richie knows it before even opening his eyes, can sense it in the icy sheets, in the sick hollow of his stomach. He keeps them closed as long as he can, not wanting to be right.

Knowing he is.

Remembered noises deafen him. Moans and whimpers and ragged breaths seared into the callous stone of his memory, compressed and compressed until they’re diamond-hard and cutting. He curls in on himself under the covers, knees to his elbows, because—

_Could you rub my back?_

_You can keep going, too._

_Richie— please just—_

_—_because put together like that, all the things Eddie said… they don’t add up to Eddie being gone, do they? Richie’s heart is weak and protesting. Because Richie was gentle enough, wasn’t he? He was kind enough, wasn’t he?

He was good enough, wasn’t he?

He swallows around the thick wad of shame and self-pity in his throat and wants desperately to go back to sleep. To go back in time. To live in a day before this one.

In the end, it’s the silence. It’s so _quiet _in the room. Richie can’t stand silence, honing and polishing those shards of remembered sounds. It begins to eat away at him like acid. He has to move.

When he finally cracks his eyes, he finds, as he expected, the other half of the white comforter mussed and empty. Being right doesn’t stop his stomach from seizing, roiling. He reaches dully for his glasses and when he puts them on, his eyes catch on a blocky black shape at the foot of the bed. He squints blearily at it before he realizes it’s his shirt, the one he gave Eddie to wear. Folded in on itself and left behind.

He wants to be sick.

He pushes the covers back and swings his legs out. Pushes his glasses up into his hair to rub roughly at his eyes, swiping away the sleepy crust in their corners, before he stands to go to the bathroom, passing the mass of pillowy comforter on the other bed, topped with a shock of tangled red-orange hair that is the still-sleeping Bev.

As soon as he closes the door, images flash behind his eyelids. The tent of his boxers. Sticky hands under too-bright light. A desperate mess of white.

While Richie was in here last night, did Eddie already regret? Was he relieved to have Richie gone from the bed?

Richie grasps the edge of the counter, feeling dirty under his skin, under his bitten-down nails. Thank fuck he finished in here, by himself. Thank fuck he didn’t make Eddie watch, didn’t make Eddie see what he could do to him.

He thuds over to the tub to turn on the tap. The pipes squeak, squeal, and then— _shhhhh_. A steady spray from the showerhead, turning warm almost instantly. He strips off and steps under the downpour.

The necessity of short showers was drilled into them during orientation. Jordan is one of the most water-poor countries on the planet, Huda told them; every building in Amman gets an allotment of water once a week that they must make last until the next. Richie used to spend thirty, forty minutes in the shower back in the States, but his showers here have become exercises in self-abnegation, in consideration for others: shorter, colder, more infrequent. No longer than five minutes, three if he can help it. The water pressure at home is so weak and the showerhead so short that often he finds himself crouching down in the tiled tub, holding the shower-hose close over his hair to at least attempt to get gravity to work with him, to get the water rushing through it faster so he can scrub violently at his hair with their pink, rose-scented shampoo and pray he gets it all out.

Here, in the hotel, the water is warm, the pressure deliciously strong. It covers him, heating him up, caressing his skin and muscles and empty chest. His hair wets down the back of his neck. He didn’t even know he had missed that feeling until just now. He feels so raw he could cry from it.

He tries to take his time. He soaps himself from head to toe. He shampoos and conditions, shaking and squeezing the tiny hotel bottles that smell of coconut. But within minutes he’s done with everything, and he’s just standing there, staring at the soapy water swirling at his feet, wondering how he used to spend so long just standing under the spray. What did he do? What did he even think about? Whatever it was, those thoughts are no longer coming. Now all he can think of is how selfish it is of him to take this for himself.

It’s probably barely ten minutes before he turns off the water and steps out again.

When he walks back into the room, Bev is awake. She treats him to a weary grin. “How was the shower? Glorious?”

Richie towels off his hair, his chest, still bare above his sweatpants. His eyes snag on his shirt, folded, on the end of the bed, and his stomach lurches again.

“It was something else,” he finally says, because he’s a fucking cliché.

“Did you hear Ben and Eddie leave?”

“No. Did you?”

“A little. It was pretty early. Their host family was going to Salt today, right?”

Richie’s heart stutters—a valiant, hopeful ruffle. He studiously avoids Bev’s eyes, busies himself with trying to pull his socks on over his damp feet. _Maybe… _“I don’t know, were they?”

Bev shrugs. “Think so. Ugh, phone’s dead,” she says, grimacing down at it briefly before lifting her face to Richie’s again. “Think I have time to shower and join you at the breakfast buffet before checkout?”

He plasters on a grin. “If I said no, which would you choose?”

“Shower, one thousand percent.”

“Wow, no hesitation.”

“Absolutely none.” She grins back at him as she stands and slides into the bathroom, calling over her shoulder, “I can meet you down there. Don’t wait up for me if you don’t wanna.”

The door closes behind Bev, and Richie lunges for his phone. Because if Eddie and Ben left together, if they left because they had to go somewhere with their host family, then maybe Eddie didn’t leave because of him, maybe he just didn’t want to wake him even though Richie wouldn’t have minded if he had, he could have lifted his heavy head from the pillow, given him a sleepy smile, run his knuckles over his forearm to his wrist and said—

**\--0 new messages--**

...So.

He considers going down to breakfast, but his gut twists hollowly at the thought of eating alone right now. Maybe his mom is up. Maybe one of her friends is up. He doesn’t know them super well, but he thinks he could recognize them in a hotel buffet.

Then he remembers that his mom said something about sightseeing today. It’s already past 9:00; they could be long gone from the hotel, scoping out the Citadel and the Roman amphitheater. He’s supposed to meet them in the afternoon for a late lunch.

Faintly, he hears Bev start the shower. He busies himself with cleaning up their makeshift bar. They finished the small bottle of tequila that Bev bought but barely made a dent in Ben’s, and he realizes with dull surprise that his drink is almost totally untouched on the side table. Eddie’s is half-empty, but then again he spilled…

Richie glances over at his shirt once more. It’s a flat, black rectangle on the end of the bed.

If it’s here, it means that this morning, Eddie must have put on his own shirt, the one he spilled on, despite all the fuss he kicked up last night. He could’ve worn Richie’s home, if he wanted to. Richie wouldn’t have minded. Richie coulda just worn his jacket zipped up all the way home, no one would have known.

Richie swipes at his prickling eyes and forces himself to keep cleaning.

When he’s gathered all of their stray cups and bottles, he sits down on the edge of the bed. He bites the inside of his cheek and then compulsively leans over for his phone.

**\--0 new messages--**

He doesn’t know why he bothers to check.

He shoves the brick into his pocket and finally eyes his shirt, still folded on the bed. With a sigh, he reaches for it, slides his fingers under the collar and rubs the fabric between his thumb and index finger, like he’s expecting it to feel different on his fingertips. It’s still slightly stiff and scratchy from lack of fabric softener. Cold.

He pulls it on and tries not to breathe in through his nose.

He realizes distantly that Bev is singing. He can’t quite make out the words, but he huffs out a laugh when he recognizes the melody of “Complicated” by Avril Lavigne. If his chest didn’t feel so carved out, he might go stand at the door and holler lyrics through it along with her. His brain flickers at the thought, a lick of joy, before it’s tamped back down.

He stands. Takes up his backpack, and his jacket from the back of the desk chair. Goes to the door. Knocks.

Bev stops singing. “Yeah?”

“I’m gonna head out, I think,” Richie replies, loud through the door.

It takes her a long time to respond. When she does, her voice is steeped in concern. “…You okay?”

“Yeah. Just tired.”

“Hungover?”

“Maybe a little.” He can practically hear her thinking about turning off the shower, getting out to see him, so he quickly goes on: “I cleaned up most of the stuff, you just need to pour it out in the sink. Take whatever’s left, I can’t bring it into my host family’s house.”

“Oh. Okay…?”

“…Okay. I’ll see ya.”

“Bye! Feel better.”

Richie opens the door and leaves without looking back.

***

Mama and Baba greet him blithely when he comes home, asking him how his mother is, if she had a nice flight, where she’s staying, where he took her to dinner last night, what she’d like for dinner when she comes over later that week. Smiling woodenly, he asks Mama to make _maqloubeh_, the rice and roast chicken dish from the first night he came to stay with them, and Mama gives him a sweet smile and tells him she thought that’s what he would want and she’s already bought the almonds. It makes a weak warmth bloom quietly within him as he pushes his way into the bedroom. He’s both relieved and disappointed to find that Bill is awake and on his laptop.

He pulls his headphones down around his neck when Richie comes in. “Hey, man, how w-was it?”

“Good,” Richie lies, toeing off his shoes and hanging his jacket on the open closet door. “Fun.”

“What’d you guys get up to?”

Richie shrugs and sits down on his bed, pulls his laptop out of his backpack and opens it. “Listened to music, watched some movies.”

He can feel Bill looking at him.

“Gonna meet my mom for lunch later, if you wanna join,” he says before Bill can say anything. He plugs his earbuds in to the laptop and tucks them into his ears, queuing up a movie from his folder. “I’m beat, though. Might take a nap first.”

Faintly, under the opening credits music, he hears Bill say, “Sure, man. I’ll try to keep q-q-quiet.”

Richie lifts his phone to set an alarm on it. He tries to ignore the hollow twinge in his gut when he sees he still has no texts.

But maybe it’s fine. If Bev is right, Eddie and Ben had to leave early to go to Salt with their host family. Maybe the morning has been so hectic that Eddie hasn’t had time to text him. Maybe Eddie’s as tired as Richie today, maybe he slept in the car all the way there, maybe he doesn’t want to text while they’re visiting because it would be impolite.

Maybe Eddie is waiting for a text from Richie.

This thought strikes him, and it strikes hard. His brain worries at it the way a dog does a bone, the way Eddie’s teeth do with his bottom lip. Because last night, Eddie came onto _him_, right? Eddie flirted, Eddie touched him, Eddie asked to be touched by him. Maybe Eddie is embarrassed not because of what happened but because he was the one who initiated it. Maybe that means the ball is in Richie’s court.

He swallows hard and pulls the phone under the covers with him, bending close to it as though by being nearer he can stop the phone from twisting his words.

**\--Richie [10:02]--  
** <strike>Hey how r u doi</strike> **   
** <strike>Hey just wanted to</strike>   
<strike>Hey did u leave this morning bc</strike>

He heaves a sigh as he deletes his latest pathetic attempt. He closes his eyes, tapping the phone against his forehead as he thinks how to do this. His mind is blank.

_Just fucking commit_.

He opens his eyes again. Sets his jaw. Slowly, heart pounding, he types and forces himself not to delete it.

**\--Richie [10:02]--**  
Hey i hope ur having a good time in salt

That’s what comes out.

He stares at it for a long time without sending. It feels bland. It feels like it could be misinterpreted as just a friendly overture. Does he _want _it to be misinterpreted?

Kinda. Maybe.

But also the idea of pretending nothing happened makes Richie’s gut feel like it’s being wadded up into a jagged, crinkly ball of tinfoil.

He swallows hard and keeps typing.

**\--Richie [10:02]--**  
Hey i hope ur having a good time in salt. Missed u this morning :)

He sends it before he can overthink it. His heart is racing as he turns his phone on alarm-only and turns it face down on the side table, vowing not to check it until his nap is over.

***

Richie’s alarm goes off after he’s spent two hours pretending to sleep. His hand shoots out instantly and sends it skittering across the bedside table. He groans and lunges even farther for it, hitting the button to turn off the alarm and seeing…

**\--0 new messages—**

He drops the phone back to the table and presses the heels of his palms so hard into his clenched-shut eyes that he sees stars. He makes himself breathe.

Then he drags himself out of bed to get ready to meet his mom for lunch.

***

Lunch with his mom and her friends, Dee and Seamus, passes painfully. He fumbles through conversation with them about what they learned on their tour of the Citadel and the Roman amphitheater. His mom’s friend Dee is an ancient history buff who has been to Tunisia, and she goes on and on comparing Amman to Tunis, the Temple of Hercules to the ruins at Carthage, and Richie tries to actively listen but he catches his mom giving him a sympathetic smile from across the table when he fumbles a question he wasn’t paying attention to.

Maggie smirks, a note of understanding in her voice when she asks, “Did you go a little hard last night, sweetheart?”

Richie’s lungs leap into his throat before he realizes she asked _did you go_ _a little hard_, not _did you get a little hard_. Jesus Christ, where his head is at…

“Oh, uh,” he says, swallowing. He slaps on an impish grin and twists his index finger into a non-existent dimple. “_Mayyybe_.”

Maggie sighs good-naturedly as Dee laughs and Seamus claps him on the back. “Well,” Maggie exhales, turning to fish something out of her purse, “that explains why someone forgot this,” and she slides that something across the table to him.

It’s a phone.

Richie stares at it, agog.

All seven of them have the same phone, so there’s little to distinguish it from Richie’s own. Based on the phone itself, it could be Ben’s. It could be Bev’s. But this phone has a sticker on the back—one of the stickers that Huda put on so they could tell their phones apart at a glance. This one is a bear, and Richie very clearly remembers the day when they got their phones, remembers saying…

_Oh, that’s easy enough. Eddie-bear has the teddy bear._

_Do not fucking call me that. Of all the things, do not fucking call me that._

“The cleaning staff found it,” Maggie explains, watching him. “They gave it to me since the room was in my name.”

“Is it yours?” Seamus asks eagerly, and when Richie looks up, he sees that he, and his mom and Dee, are all smiling expectantly. It dawns on him that they’ve clearly been waiting for this moment, for the reveal. They’re dorks like that.

“Nah, sorry,” he says airily, as he tucks the phone into his jacket pocket.

“Aw, dang it,” says Maggie, wrinkling her nose as she turns to Seamus. “Shoulda known. My son would’ve been going through withdrawals without his phone.”

“Ha-ha.”

“So whose is it? Bev’s?”

“Uhh…” Richie briefly entertains the prospect of lying, but he’s actually not much in the habit with his mom. At least, not since going to college. “No,” he says slowly, measuring his words. “It’s Eddie’s.”

Maggie’s eyes widen, and he instantly regrets his honesty.

“Eddie’s,” she echoes, and it’s clear she’s trying to keep her voice steady, trying to keep from prying even though she so obviously wants to know the scoop. Richie has to stop himself from putting his face in his hands. “I didn’t know Eddie came over last night. I would have liked to meet him.”

Richie gives her a smile that he knows does not reach his eyes. “You’ll see him on Sunday,” he says, as he idly checks his own phone to see **\--1 new message--**. (It’s from Bev, who must have finally charged her dead cell: _Ben text me 2 say eddie left his phone @ the hotel?_) “In class. With everyone else.”

“For your _birth-dayy_,” sing-songs Seamus, reaching for the last piece of falafel.

“Yep,” Richie agrees. “For my birthday.”

***

Richie’s not great company for that lunch. He knows it. And by the time he gets home, he’s feeling even more keyed up.

Because Eddie doesn’t have his phone.

Because Eddie hasn’t had his phone all day.

All bets are off.

Desperately fighting down the lightening feeling in his chest, Richie tries to reason through what this might mean, vis-à-vis their hotel hookup. In the best-case scenario—which he is inclined to dwell on, considering what a fucking shitshow the day has been up until now—it means that Eddie has been wanting to text Richie all day but hasn’t been able to. He could have asked Ben, but, well, what’s he gonna say? _Ben, could you text Richie to ask him how he’s feeling about last night? _

Richie scoffs at the idea. _That_ thought? Perish it! Pish-posh! Preposterous!

Even the fact that Ben only texted Bev and not Richie about the missing phone is easily explained. Eddie, patting his pockets, turns to Ben and says, _Oh, shit, I forgot my phone. _Ben says, _Don’t worry, I’ll text Bev_, because Ben is head over heels for Bev and obviously would have her on the brain instead of Richie. Eddie, as the idiot who forgot his phone, can’t demand that Ben text Richie, too, not when each text costs them money.

Bada bing bada boom, **\--0 new messages--**.

_It’s all so simple_, Richie thinks giddily as he falls back onto his bed, both phones clutched to him in the empty room. He feels so dizzily relieved that he even considers rubbing one out to the memory of Eddie’s uneven moans against his mouth while Richie jerked him off under the covers.

_Buzz._

Eddie’s phone vibrates against his ribs. He ignores it.

_Buzz._

Again?

He shouldn’t look at it.

_Buzz!_

God, this is just getting ridiculous. Richie lifts the phone to peer at the display.

**\--7 new messages--**

Jesus Christ.

_Buzz!_

**\--8 new messages--**

His eyes fly wide. Jesus _Christ_! Who the fuck is texting Eddie so much?

His stomach tilts. He knows who’s texting Eddie so much. He knows, he knows. But somehow he still has to see.

He navigates to the messages. And there she is.

**\--Myra [19:39] (1/2)--  
**I just don’t understand why you needed to schedule it when we normally  
**\--Myra [19:39] (2/2)--  
**talk

**\--Myra [14:17]--  
**It’s not very nice to ignore me, Eddie.  
**\--Myra [14:20] (1/2)--  
**Is this because of our fight last night? I didn’t think that kind of t  
**\--Myra [14:20] (2/2)--  
**hing mattered to you.  
**\--Myra [14:25]--  
**I still think you’re handsome.  
**\--Myra [14:29]--  
**Eddie, aren’t you going to answer?

_Buzz._

_Buzz._

_Buzz!_

Richie’s blood rushes faster with every hard _zzz _of the phone on his bedside table. He should turn it off. He should probably turn it off.

_Buzz! Buzz!_

But…

But there’s no reason for Myra to be so worried. And it probably costs both of them a fortune to text internationally like this. She must be running down the money on Eddie’s phone like crazy right now.

All it would take is one text. One text. One text to tell her Eddie’s fine and he’ll get back to her later once he has his phone again.

Richie’s heart is pounding as he thumbs the **Reply** button.

**\--Eddie [14:36]--**   
<strike>Hey myra this is richie im eddies fri  
Hey myra eddie doesnt have his phone rn he left it at the  
Hey this is richie im on eddies program and i have his phone bc  
Hey eddie doesnt have his phone but im sure he will text u bac</strike>

_Buzz-buzz-buzz!_

Richie nearly drops the phone, the vibration startles him so badly. 

**\--Myra [14:37] (1/3)--  
**Eddie I know you said not to call you anymore but I’m getting so worri  
**\--Myra [14:37] (2/3)--**  
ed. The last time you didn’t respond to me for this long you were in t  
**\--Myra [14:37] (3/3)--**  
he HOSPITAL EDDIE!!!

“Jesus Christ,” Richie mutters. His stomach sinks, weighted down with the cinderblocks of Myra’s obvious guilt-tripping. What if Eddie really _was _in the hospital? Wouldn’t she feel bad for trying to make _him _feel bad?

He remembers what Eddie said about Myra ages ago, in Hammudeh.

_I would never use the word “chill” to describe Myra…_

Ugh. So he really _does _need to text her. Walk her back from the edge before she calls the fucking State Department. He works his thumbs over the number pad with renewed conviction.

**\--Eddie [14:40]--**  
Hey its richie eddie is fine but i have his phone he will text u l8r

After staring at it for a moment longer, Richie sends it and sets down the phone. He reopens his Arabic textbook and hits play on _Arrested Development_, and—

_Buzz!_

…

Richie glances at it and then back down at his book. It’s probably just an obligatory, “Oh, okay, thanks,” text. It probably doesn’t require him to look right away. It probably—

_BUZZ!_

Richie slams the space bar on his laptop to pause the show and picks up the phone.

**\--Myra [14:42] (1/2)--  
**Richie??? Eddie hasn’t mentioned a Richie, who is this?? Why do you ha  
**\--Myra [14:42] (2/2)--**  
ve his phone??

Richie frowns, his pulse starting to jump. What the hell? Eddie has _so_ mentioned a Richie. Richie walked in on Eddie Skyping with Myra, and Eddie definitely mentioned a Richie! She should know. She _does_ know.

Or maybe Eddie talks about him so seldom that she’s forgotten.

Richie grits his teeth. _Get it together, Tozier. That shouldn’t hurt. It’s probably better if Eddie’s girlfriend has no idea who you are. Probably for the fucking best._

He stares at the phone. The whole point of texting her back in the first place was to keep them both from depleting the cash on Eddie’s phone card. Eddie literally can’t afford for Richie to get into a long conversation with his girlfriend.

**\--Eddie [14:45]--**  
We were hanging out last nite n he forgot his phone

It seems like he has only seconds back at his book before the phone buzzes again.

**\--Myra [14:46]--  
**Where is Eddie????  
**\--Eddie [14:48]--**  
Hes in salt w his host fam coming back 2moro i think

This time he’s expecting it when the phone vibrates.

**\--Myra [14:48]--  
**Do you have the number for his host family??

Richie huffs.

**\--Eddie [14:49]--  
**No. I will tell eddie u texted when i give him his phone  
**\--Myra [14:49]--  
**When will that be?  
**\--Eddie [14:50]--  
**2moro or the next day  
**\--Myra [14:52] (1/2)--**  
Are you sure he’s all right? What if something happened to him? I have  
**\--Myra [14:52] (2/2)--**  
n’t heard from him since last night

Richie snorts. “You and me both, sister,” he grumbles at the phone.

But still it squirms in his brain.

_Last night._

It wriggles (_last night_), itches (_last night_), prickles (_last night_) and he has to scour the messages, _downdowndown_, until he finds it, the larvae of those words burrowed deep in the text chain:

_Is this because of our fight last night?_

Eddie had a fight with his girlfriend.

They fought, and then Eddie came to the hotel and flirted with Richie and touched Richie and kissed Richie.

Eddie did it because he had a fight with his girlfriend.

That hollow feeling is back, ravenous this time, clawing up into his throat. It feels hard to breathe.

Eddie putting way too much booze in his drinks…

Eddie not caring about the movie but not being tired…

Eddie asking him to rub his back because he was anxious…

…all of it was probably because he was thinking about…

Swallowing hard around the knot in his throat, Richie scrolls back down, through the endless screens of **Myra Myra Myra Myra Myra** until he finds what he’s looking for. The lone **Richie** in a sea of **Myra**s. He opens it, knowing already what it says, how naively it says it.

**\--Richie [10:02]--**  
Hey i hope ur having a good time in salt. Missed u this morning :)

His skin crawls, swarmed with chittering, metamorphosing insects. God, imagine if Eddie had seen it. Imagine if he had seen _missed u this morning :)._ Imagine if he had seen **MYRAMYRAMYRAMYRAMYRAMYRARICHIE**_._

He wishes he could burn the words out of existence. Wishes he could forget he ever typed them out and sent them, ever thought that maybe Eddie had been waiting on Richie. Wishes he could go back to thinking that was the truth.

But at least only one of them ever has to know about them.

He presses in the command to **Delete**.

**OK?**

**OK.**

There’s no cheesy animation to watch of it deleting, no poof like dragging a file to the trashcan. One moment it’s there; the next, it’s gone. Just like Eddie was this morning.

_OK._

He pulls up Myra’s latest text. Rereads it.

_What if something happened to him? I haven’t heard from him since last night._

Impassively, he types out his response.

**\--Eddie [15:00]--  
**I dunno what 2 tell u hes fine but his phone is dying bye

Richie pauses for a moment. Bites his cheek. Presses down on the power button and holds it. Just before the screen blackens, one more text flashes onto it.

**\--Myra [15:01]--  
**That’s really rude

His gut twists with guilty frustration as the screen turns black.

***

The next day Richie plans to spend moping at home. When Bill sleepily rolls over in the other bed, blinks blearily at him, already on his laptop, and says, “Morning,” and “What’ve you got goin’ on tuh-today?”

“Whole lotta nothin’, Billiam,” Richie replies, queuing up the episode of _The Office_ where Jim confesses his feelings to Pam and gets shot down. Also on the docket: Ross and Rachel’s breakup and that episode of _Angel _where he becomes human for a day but it turns out he and Buffy can’t be together after all.

Richie is a world-class wallower.

Bill must sense Richie’s desire to be left alone, because he wordlessly picks up his phone and exits the room, leaving Richie to his own devices. When he slides back inside—and if he returned even a few moments earlier, he would have caught Richie scowling at the screen and grumbling, _Don’t look so fuckin’ pleased with yourself, John Krasinski, she’s not leaving her fiancé yet, bitch—_he asks, “Did you get the t-text from Ben?”

Richie pulls out his headphones. “No,” he says, but he’s already reaching for his phone. He made himself promise not to look at it at all today, not until he’s supposed to meet his mom for dinner.

Sure enough:

**\--Haystack [10:24]--**  
Hey Eddie & I are going to Aroma to do HW. Wanna come?

His mouth goes dry. _Eddie…_

Bill is already stuffing his books into his backpack. “I have a lot of shit to do and like, no m-muh-motivation, so,” he’s saying, while Richie stares at his phone like it’s an oncoming train. “Any interest?”

Richie swallows hard. Those maggots are beginning again to writhe in his flesh. “U-uhh… yeah, sure.”

_Yeah, sure?_

“Cool, we can shuh-share a cab.”

“…Cool.”

_Cool? _

But still Richie closes his laptop and swings his legs out of bed, beginning to slide his things into his own bag. It’s probably good, right? Seeing Eddie now. He’s going to have to see him no matter what; it’s not like he can avoid him. It’ll be like ripping off a Band-Aid. It’ll be good for Richie, someone who tends to shrink from pain, avoid the difficult conversations, hope that everything will just go away rather than running head-first into almost certain strife.

Then he sees Eddie’s phone.

He sees Eddie’s phone, and they’re not maggots anymore, not grubs. They’re hornets in his blood, drowning out his thoughts, buzzing in his ears, buzzing buzzing buzzing like the sound of—

“Actually,” he says, and it comes out sharp. Sharp enough that Bill pauses, midway through pulling on a flannel. “I don’t think I’m gonna make it to study with you guys.”

“…No?”

“Nah, but, uh…” Richie reaches over to his side table and grabs the brick, lifeless, unbuzzing. “Give this to Eddie, though, wouldja? And, uh, tell him he might need to put some more money on it.”

Bill shrugs on his flannel. Slowly he takes the phone with an odd look that Richie pointedly ignores. He just pulls the laptop back out of his backpack and throws himself back on his bed. He waves listlessly to Bill when he steps out, tucks his earbuds back in, and queues up another episode.

***

Richie’s mom is waiting for him outside AmmanAbroad when he and Bill arrive on Sunday morning. She looks sleepy, holding a coffee in a sleeve emblazoned with the hotel’s logo. Yawning, she pulls him into a hug.

“My baby. Happy actual birthday.”

“Thanks, Mom. And again, please, I beg you: not in front of Stanley.”

“Hmm, but you know that only makes me want to do it more,” she says, squeezing his shoulders hard before stepping back. She smiles at Bill. “Good to see you again, Bill. They couldn’t keep us apart.”

Bill snorts. “Y-you, too, Mrs. Tozier.”

They pile into the elevator. Maggie turns to one reflective wall and checks her teeth, picking at them with her pinky fingernail. “Richie, I had a poppyseed,” she chides him. “You should have told me.”

“I didn’t see it!”

“Agh, what good is having a kid, anyway…”

Bill chuckles in the corner. Richie ignores him.

“We still have a few minutes, so I’m gonna get some coffee in the lounge.”

“Coffee sounds good,” his mom says brightly.

“You already have coffee.”

“And am just about ready for some more.”

“All right,” Richie says warningly, as the elevator dings and the doors open. “Hope you like Nescafe.”

“Oh my god, Nescafe,” his mom exhales, like she’s been dying to talk about it. She follows him eagerly out the doors. “What is up with all the Nescafe? We tried to order coffee from a restaurant and all they said was, ‘Nescafe?’”

Richie hides a smile as he waves hello to Diyala at the front desk, ushering his mom down the hallway. “Yep, it’s either Turkish coffee or Nescafe here.”

“But at a _restaurant_?”

Bill peels off from their group as they pass their corner classroom and turn to continue on to the lounge. Through another glass door, they catch Bev and Ben waiting for their beginner MSA teacher to arrive. Richie and Maggie wave at them, and they wave back, glancing up from where they’re both bent over Ben’s camera. Bev’s electric blue headphones are hanging around her neck, nestled in the collar of her jean jacket.

Richie pushes the door to the lounge open and graciously holds it for his mom, the way she taught him to when she would take him shopping and he, an oblivious eight-year-old, would push through the door into Macy’s and let it swing closed in her face.

“_Shukran_,” she says as she passes him, her accent terrible.

“_‘Afwan_,” he replies, imagining his accent at least marginally better.

Mike and Stan are on the lounge’s loveseat, Mike’s Arabic book ignored on his lap as he laughs at something Stan is saying. Mike looks different, his previously inch-long hair buzzed close to his scalp, emphasizing the line of his jaw, his cheekbones, and Richie has to fight the urge to let out another overwhelmed giggle, the way he did back in Mecca Mall, meeting Stan and Bill for the first time.

“Ah, sorry, Mom, there must be some mistake,” Richie announces loudly. “I must have accidentally taken us to the meat locker, because there’s a big slab of muscled beefcake in here.”

Stan and Mike both look up. Mike’s face is open but puzzled, gaze flitting between Richie and Maggie, unknown to him. Stan only quirks an eyebrow, his mouth flattening in an expression that Richie has learned means, _You really don’t think at all before you speak, do you?_

Then understanding dawns on Mike’s face. He stands up, leaning over to hold out his hand. “Mrs. Tozier? It’s so nice to meet you, I’m Mike—”

Richie steps between them, shoving his hand into Mike’s. “Oh, yes of course, Mike. _Mike Rotch_, what a pleasure,” he says enthusiastically, pumping their arms.

“Richie…” Mike chuckles, eyes darting to Maggie as though he’s uncomfortable with being used for a _my crotch _joke. Imagine that.

Stan cranes his neck around Mike’s legs. “So is this just how you are on your birthday, or…?”

“It’s how I am every day, Stanley. I can just get away with it on my birthday.” He bats his eyelashes winningly.

After introductions between his mom and Mike—and then Saleh, when he enters through the other door to the lounge, momentarily blindsided by a stranger in the room—Richie stirs two piping-hot mugs of Nescafe and leads her down the hallway to the classroom. He tries to ignore how his lungs hitch, how his heart rate begins to spike, how his stomach rolls uneasily around the heavy stone that sits dull and dreadful inside.

He knows who’s waiting at the end of the hallway. Who he hasn’t spoken to since Thursday night. Who he hasn’t seen since he folded himself over him, wrapped an arm across his chest and buried his face in the back of his neck, smelling mint and margarita mix.

Richie turns the handle, the latch to the door clicks open, and Eddie snaps up.

Their eyes meet.

And Richie’s skitter away instantly, blood pulsing painfully in his throat. The hazy flash of Eddie’s expression was unreadable but still set hornets buzzing, stinging, in Richie’s veins.

“And this is the classroom, Mom,” Richie says loudly, silently praying for her to be cool. He gestures grandly at the desks, the walls, the whiteboard.

Maggie nods, looking around as she follows him in. “Very nice. Very classroomy.”

Bill laughs, his laptop already set up beside Eddie.

His mom brushes past him into the room, running fingertips lightly along the lacquered tabletops, skipping over the edges that don’t quite line up. Richie swallows hard, watching warily as she approaches Eddie at the far end of the classroom. “I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Maggie Tozier, Richie’s mom.”

_So far so good_, Richie thinks, pretending not to watch as warily as he feels.

Eddie’s eyes are wide, his expression artlessly surprised. “O-oh, of course!” he says. “I— Yeah, I knew you were— Right.” His chair scrapes against the floor as he half-stands, leaning across the table to offer a hand. “Eddie Kaspbrak.”

“Eddie, nice to meet you. Did you go to Syria with the others?”

Her voice betrays nothing. The hairs inside Richie’s ears are tickling with it. _Fuckin’ smooth, Mom_.

“Oh, uh—” Eddie’s tone seems surprised. By the fact that she knows enough to ask about Syria, or by how little she seems to know about who he is, Richie’s unsure. “Yeah! Yeah, I was the one who got stranded in Palmyra with Richie.”

Maggie stalls mid-shake. “…Stranded in Palmyra?”

Richie’s bag drops into the chair with a heavy clunk. “Whoa, whoa, whoa…”

“Richie,” she says, her tone warning. “Did he just say that you got _stranded in Palmyra_?”

“First off, it’s not as bad as it sounds…”

“You didn’t tell your m-muh-mom, Richie?” Bill asks.

Eddie’s face, when Richie’s eyes flit over it, looks caught between apologetic and amused. “Yeah, I thought you woulda told her…”

“I thought telling _your _mom would be enough,” Richie shoots back, unable to help himself.

Eddie scoffs, rolling his eyes as he takes his seat again. “You better fucking not tell my mom,” he grumbles.

“And why shouldn’t we be telling moms, _hmm_?” Maggie asks, fixing Richie with a scrutinizing glare, leaning towards him.

Then the door opens again, and Manal sweeps in with her typical cheerful, “_Sabah al-kheir, _**students, how are you?**” and the three of them chime back, “_Sabah an-noor, _Manal,” as she sets her briefcase down on the desk at the front of the room. Her eyes sparkle with curiosity when they land on Maggie.

“**And who is this?**”

“_Ummi_,” Richie says, landing a hand on her shoulder in what he hopes is a pacifying way. “Mom, this is Manal.”

Instantly, Manal’s face lights up. She bobs from side-to-side in what Richie has learned is her happy dance before she shuffles forward to take Maggie’s hand. “Manal.”

“I’m Maggie.”

“Ma-aggie,” Manal repeats in the sing-song inflection she uses for all their names. “In Jordan we would call you Umm Ritchee.”

“Richie’s mom, basically,” he explains with a grin. “Like the Fountains of Wayne song.”

“Not at all like the Fountains of Wayne song,” Eddie pipes up, his tone dry.

A laugh escapes Richie’s lips, heart fluttering. He wants badly to look over his shoulder at Eddie. He wants to take in the unamused expression he knows is there.

Then he feels the weight of his phone in his pocket. The weight of **\--0 new messages--**. The weight of _Is this because of our fight last night?_

So he forces himself not to look. Not to see the put-on frustration, the performative lack of amusement that normally urges him on, spurs him to poke and prod, to get Eddie’s attention on him and only him.

Instead he bites the inside of his cheek, pulls out a chair for his mom, and takes his own seat beside her to open his laptop.

***

Class proceeds. It’s nearly entirely in Arabic by this point in the semester, which must leave his mom pretty lost, but she’s a good sport. And if Richie shows off a little bit whenever it’s his turn to talk, well… it’s his _mom_. She’s helping pay for all this; she oughta get to see the results of this ridiculous endeavor for her theater kid son.

At the break between classes, Richie leaves for the lounge. When he comes back, refilled mugs of Nescafe in tow, he freezes in the doorway.

His mom is talking to Eddie.

And Eddie is _smiling_.

His mom is smiling, too. They’re both smiling.

Richie stands. Stares. A wary heat crawls up the back of his neck.

What the fuck? Why would Eddie want to talk to his mom?

Slowly, he enters the room and sets Maggie’s mug in front of her. She turns at the sound and smiles tightly up at him. “Oh, Richie. Eddie was just telling me about when you were—now, what were the words you used? Oh yes—_stranded in Palmyra_.”

Richie’s eyes immediately flit to Eddie. And Eddie… doesn’t avoid his gaze at all. He just bows his shoulders, slightly sheepish. The reaction is so normal, so untainted by any potential weirdness, that it has confusion needling at Richie between the temples.

It’s… so _normal_.

Even though they… Even though Richie…

So… Richie should be normal, too?

Swallowing hard, he draws his theatrics around him like a cloak and heaves a dramatic sigh, letting his arms fall boneless at his sides. “C’mooon, man,” he whines.

“She asked!”

“You can’t deflect? You have Ella Enchanted syndrome?”

“The fuck is Ella Enchan—”

“Richard.” His mom’s tone is warning. “Are you sincerely encouraging a friend of yours to lie to your own _mother_?”

“I didn’t say _lie_! I said _deflect_, there’s a difference!”

“Oh, if it weren’t your birthday, young man…” She shakes a fist at him jokingly, and Richie pretends to cower from it.

“No, no, please, ma’am, not the lash…”

Eddie snorts into his fist, and it sends a surprised thrill blooming through Richie’s veins. Because Eddie is…

Eddie really is acting normal.

It’s… unexpected. It’s out of the blue, out of left field, out of all the idiomatic places from which things unpredictably come, and Richie has no fucking idea what to do with it.

The click of Manal’s boots reentering the classroom marks the beginning of their _‘ammiya _class, and Richie slowly sits, forehead lightly furrowed. Distantly, he feels his mom unclench her fist to rub his upper back soothingly, smiling, and he turns to give a half-smile back.

Beyond her, he can see Eddie looking at them, a fond tilt to his eyebrows. It sends the stone in his stomach rolling, turning over heavy and awkward like the bulk of tangled sheets in a dryer. Fuck, Richie wants so desperately to know what’s going through his head right now.

Because... _why_? Why is Eddie acting so normal? Under other circumstances, it’s always been clear from Eddie’s behavior that he’s affected by whatever happened. After his not-asthma attack, he brought Richie that delicious, salty egg bread, all self-conscious gratitude and begrudging excuses. After their fight at the Queen Vic, he seemed resolute to ignore Richie, his anger on a hair trigger that Richie was able to set off even with clumsy, flailing jabs. But now, after they kissed, they _kissed…_

Nothing.

_Why?_

Possible explanations race through Richie’s mind.

Is he acting normal just because Richie’s mom is here? Because he doesn’t want to be rude in front of Maggie?

Is it because it’s Richie’s birthday? Because Eddie might be hotheaded and stubborn, but he doesn’t want to be a dick on a day Richie should be celebrating?

Is it because he actually… _doesn’t _regret it? (Richie tries hard to suppress the way his heart lifts hopefully at the mere idea.) Because he pressed himself against Richie, twined his fingers in Richie’s hair, sucked on Richie’s fingers, gasped into Richie’s mouth when he came in Richie’s hand, and loved every fucking second of it, the way Richie did?

Or is it because (and this possibility makes Richie swallow, shift uneasily in his chair, heart sinking again) he wants them to just… pretend it never happened?

…Fuck.

_Fuck_, Richie does not want to dwell on that option. Wants to delete it, wants to go back one, back to the one in which Eddie spent the weekend rapturously reliving every press and grab and desperate digging of digits into his skin, the way Richie wanted to. But that option pulls at him, tugging at the threads of his loose-knit composure, wedging itself into the base of his skull, settling there like fangs.

Because whatever else happened over the past few days, wherever the hell the percentage is now on Eddie being straight, on Eddie wanting Richie to kiss him, to touch him, there is still a one hundred percent likelihood of Eddie having a girlfriend. A Myra. Who cares about him, who worries about him, who texts him incessantly, who he fought with before he came to Richie’s hotel room and let Richie make him forget for a night whatever the hell it was he and Myra fought about.

Because she had no idea who Richie was, so it sure as hell wasn’t him.

Manal asks Eddie and Mike to walk through a mini-dialogue, cobbled together from some of the vocabulary words on their worksheet. It affords Richie the opportunity to study him, peering surreptitiously through his smudged glasses. Eddie sits easily in his chair, slightly tense but only because Eddie seems incapable of letting his body fully relax. He gestures wildly when he can’t think of the right word, scouring the worksheet with a purposeful frown. His haircut still looks fresh to Richie, still makes Eddie’s eyes stand out in his freckled face, and Richie can hardly bear to look at it when his fingers are itching with the memory of how it felt fuzzy against his hot palms.

Other than that, though, Eddie looks… the same. Unperturbed. Normal.

Then he glances over at Richie. Their eyes meet. Adrenaline spikes in Richie’s veins, holding him fast, staring back. Frozen. Exposed.

But Eddie only sticks his chin out, jerks his head to one side. _What!? _he mouths, all false hostility, joking frustration. Their schtick.

And Richie, nerves singing, does the first thing he thinks of, what’s become almost reflex at this point. Grinning, he makes a loose fist, flicks his wrist toward his face, and shoves his tongue in his opposite cheek. His signature move. Just once.

Just once, but that’s enough for an icy wave of horror to wash over him immediately afterwards. Ready for revulsion to creep across Eddie’s face.

But Eddie just rolls his eyes. He flicks his gaze to the front of the room to check that Manal is facing the board, and then, angling his laptop so only Richie can see, gives him the middle finger.

Richie chokes on a laugh, turning it into a cough when his mom looks his way.

And, well… shit. Looks like Richie had better try to be fucking normal, too.

***

At lunch, Richie leads his mom back down the hallway to the lounge, Mike and Eddie trailing behind them down the hallway. It’s boisterous inside when they open the door: Bill sitting in the armchair with his feet braced on the coffee table while he bops to music streaming from his laptop; Bev attempting to stuff fries into Ben’s mouth from her Styrofoam takeout container; Stan debating with Saleh in Arabic over something or other, Richie thinks he catches the words for _borders _and _repression _and… _Zionism_? Yikes.

As soon as his mom is through the door, Richie cups his hands around his mouth and shouts, “Mama T in the hizzouse!”

“Shut up, Richie,” Bev answers affectionately, still focused on feeding French fries to Ben.

Richie turns to his mom with a hangdog expression as Eddie and Mike enter behind them. “You see how they treat me?”

“It’s good to see you’ve found friends here, too, sweetheart,” she says, smiling. He gestures for her to take the other armchair as he plops down beside Bev on the couch.

“_Na‘iman_,” Saleh calls from across the room.

Eddie freezes, his eyes darting around when he realizes Saleh’s speaking to him. He looks so cute, all self-conscious, that Richie has to hide a smile. “Uh… _aywa_…?”

“You’re supposed to say, _Allah yen‘am ‘alayk,_” Stan says with a smirk, spinning his chair in Eddie’s direction.

“That’s a lotta words…” Eddie grumbles.

“It’s what we say when you get a haircut,” Saleh explains.

“Oh, is it for a haircut?” Bev asks, fingers still stuffed in Ben’s mouth. “It’s what my host family says whenever I’ve just taken a shower and my hair’s still wet.”

“Yes, we use it for that, too,” Saleh says, fingers playing thoughtfully over the scar on his chin. “It’s supposed to be, um, something like, ‘You look clean’? Or… fresh?”

“Fresh as _hell_,” Richie says, grinning at Eddie, who only sighs back at him.

“Yeah, I meant to say this earlier, but the haircut looks good, man,” Mike says, clapping Eddie on the back. “Was the girlfriend finally happy with it?”

Eddie’s shoulders bunch towards his ears. His gaze flickers to Richie and away, eye contact so fleeting that Richie could almost believe he imagined it. Eddie mumbles, eyes slanting away, “Uhh, not really…”

“Seriously?” Mike laughs, incredulous. “Why not?”

Richie is so focused on straining to pick out the details of Eddie’s reply that he only barely hears the other door open over his shoulder, the quiet unhooking of the latch. But then the overhead lights go off, and before he knows it, Bev has whipped toward him and is smiling and sucking in air and then—

_Sena hilwa yaa gameel  
Sena hilwa yaa gameel_

—Richie blinks and Huda is inching into the darkened room, balancing a cake covered in lit candles, light flickering on her face, leading the rest of them in the Arabic version of “Happy Birthday,” her voice sweet and confident. Saleh stands up behind his desk, leaning over the small partition to sing along, Stan beside him, rotating a quarter-circle to and fro with the rhythm of the song. Bev is singing in Richie’s ear, and Ben on her other side; Bill in the armchair, off-key; Mike deep and rich and easily discernible; Maggie, delighted but just as surprised as Richie, the only one singing in English. And across the room, his face caught halfway between self-consciousness and celebration: Eddie, smiling and singing along, eyes glinting with candlelight.

Richie’s breath catches in his tight throat. It takes him two tries to blow out all the candles.

Saleh flips the lights back on, and Huda, smiling warmly, passes him a knife. Bev rubs at one shoulder, cooing at him; Bill reaches across the coffee table to pat him hard on the other.

“Happy birthday, _akhi_!”

“Happy birthday, m-man.”

“Yeah. _Sena hilwa, _loser.”

“Two tries, huh? That the best you can do, Tozier?”

Richie chokes out a laugh, his eyes stinging as he cuts the cake. It looks like chocolate inside, dark and rich, the layers ever so slightly uneven. Homemade. He stares at it hazily, extricating a wedge and flopping it onto the plastic plate.

“Who wants the first piece?” he asks, not looking, afraid of them seeing the sheen of his eyes.

Businesslike, Bev takes the plate from Richie’s fingers. Tucking a plastic fork in beside the cake, she says, “Here, you just cut. I’ll pass it. Saleh, _biddak _cake?”

_“Aywa, low samahti_._”_

Richie busies himself with cutting more pieces, the twinge behind his eyes quickly receding as he focuses in the task. Bev ensures a plate finds its way to everyone who wants it, feeding Richie specific requests like _extra frosting on Mike’s _and _a small one for Ben_, until finally she takes hers. Richie stares down at his slice, the only one left, and feels his eyes prickling.

A warm hand lands on his wrist, rubs over his forearm. His mom looks at him kindly, grin distorted by the mouthful of cake. He huffs and rolls his eyes, softly bats her away. He pretends he doesn’t appreciate it when Bev, too, snakes an arm around his shoulders and smacks a too-wet kiss to his cheek before turning back to her cake.

“Did you make this yourself, Huda?” Ben asks.

“Mm,” she hums with a modest shrug.

“_‘An jad_? It’s delicious!”

“Yeah, this is awesome,” Bill agrees.

“Thanks for being born during the school year, Richie,” Mike chuckles.

“Yeah, we’re really carrying this team,” Bev says, swallowing the bite she’s taken as she glares around the room. “I’m lookin’ at you, all you summer babies.”

“Early September isn’t the summer,” Eddie says indignantly, muffled with cake.

“Hmm, debatable.”

“It’s really not.”

Huda clears her throat. “I don’t mean to derail the conversation,” she says, amused, putting her empty plate down on the coffee table, “but while I have you all here…”

“Ah, I knew it,” Richie exclaims. “The cake was a lie.”

Ben gives a polite chuckle, which confirms his suspicion that Ben both pity-laughs for him and is a huge nerd.

“Terrible,” Stan mutters, shaking his head. (Guess Stanley is a nerd, too.)

“I didn’t want to miss the opportunity,” Huda says, barreling on, “of having everyone here to go over a few items of business. First of all, the semester is officially…” She leans forward, well-shaped eyebrows lifted. “…_half over_. Can you believe it?”

Richie blinks dumbly at her, feeling like the floor has dropped out from beneath him. _Half over?_

“No,” Eddie says bluntly. A few chuckles sound throughout the room.

Huda laughs kindly. “Well, it’s true. Which means we have our trip to biblical Jordan and the Dead Sea next Tuesday. Please be here at eight AM, with a bathing suit and towel if you plan to swim. Which we do recommend! It’s a unique swimming experience.

“The last order of business is spring break.”

Richie’s eyes go wide. “Oh, shit, spring break. I totally forgot.”

“How did you _forget _about spring break?” Bev asks, incredulous.

“There’s a lot going on, okay!? The woman who birthed me is here and I must cater to her every whim, as is custom.”

“Unless that whim is drip coffee,” Maggie mutters.

“Well, it’s coming up in just a couple weeks,” says Huda, “and I only have travel request forms from a few of you. If you plan to leave Amman for the break, make sure you get those in to me soon so I can approve them.”

“Wait, does everyone already have plans?” Richie looks around the room. “What are people doing? What’s cool? What’s hip?”

“Stan and I are going to Jerusalem and Tel Aviv,” says Mike.

“Hell yeah, I could crash an Israel trip,” Richie jokes. He smiles at Stan.

Stan stares back, stone-faced and unflinching.

“Ben and I are thinking about Egypt,” says Bev.

“Jesus Christ, where the hell have I been?” Richie complains, his head falling back against the couch. “Seventh wheeling it?”

“I don’t have puh-plans yet, either, Richie,” Bill offers. “Lebanon kind of wiped me out, cash-wise. Gotta live s-s-small for a while.”

“What about you, Eddie?” Maggie asks across the room. Richie wonders how obvious it is to her that he wanted to do the same. “Any holiday plans?”

Eddie bites his lip, brings down his plate from near his chin to rest on his knee. “Uh, I dunno,” he says. “Bev made Beirut sound pretty cool.”

Bev leans forward eagerly. “Beirut is _so _cool, Eddie, you _have _to go. Bill and I can tell you all the best places.”

“You and Richie should go together.” Richie’s jaw drops open as he turns, but Stan only smiles sweetly back at him, one arm draped over the back of his chair. “Keep him from crashing other people’s trips.”

Ears thudding, Richie tries to let out a weak croak of protest.

“And flights to Lebanon are cheap!” Mike adds brightly as he scrapes up some remaining frosting with the side of his fork, seemingly oblivious to Stan’s machinations. “We were thinking about going, actually, but Jerusalem was too good to pass up, with our majors. Right, Stan?”

Stan hums affirmatively, still making too-innocent eye contact with Richie, whose neck feels like it is slowly catching on fire.

Huda nods sagely. “It’s always good to travel with a buddy.”

Stan tilts his head, eyes narrowed and catlike. “Yeah, Rich,” he says lightly. “It’s good to travel with a buddy.”

“Just make sure you get in your travel forms.”

“You got ours, right, Huda?”

“Yes, I did. Thank you for getting them in early, Stan.”

“_Mish mushkila_.”

Maggie leans forward to set her plate on the table. “Well, if there’s anyone you’re going to travel to a foreign, war-torn country with,” she says, her tone taking on a slight edge as she shoots Richie a glare, “I’d be glad to know it was the person who got you through nine hours trapped in Syria with no money and no way to contact anyone.”

“Mooom,” Richie whines, his head lolling on his neck, “you’re making it sound way worse than it was…”

“I mean…” Ben drawls. “That’s pretty much—”

“No one asked you, Benjamin! Finish your small piece of cake!”

“But I’m full.”

“A likely story.”

“And it’s not actually all that war-torn, Maggie,” Bev says, waving her fork in the air. “Like, some buildings still have bullet holes and stuff in them, and there’s a lot of security checkpoints, but the war’s been over since, like, 1990. It honestly feels like being in Europe compared to Jordan.”

Bill cranes his neck to look at Eddie behind him, smiling. “Are you actually thinking Beirut, Eddie? Or were you just m-muh-making conversation?”

“Oh, yeah, I was,” Eddie says, reaching up to run his hand over his shorn hair. “And I mean, I kinda thought Richie and I would go together, anyway.”

Richie’s heart kicks against his ribs. He can feel Stan’s eyes on him. His mom’s. Bev’s, Bill’s—god, fuck, is it everyone? It feels like everyone, but most of all Eddie, Eddie’s big, dark eyes looking at him like everything’s normal, like Richie doesn’t know how Eddie tastes, smells, sounds when he’s panting against him.

“W-well, this is the first I’m hearing it!” he finally replies. A wheeze. A high-pitched laugh. Normal.

Normal, normal, normal.

Stan, rotating in his chair, lets out a heavy sigh.

“Well,” says Huda, “whatever you decide, just make sure you get your travel forms to me by Thursday.”

Slowly, conversation starts up again. Bill chats with Eddie about Beirut. Ben starts to gather everyone’s empty plates to throw away. Maggie turns to Mike and Stan to ask about Jerusalem, where she and her friends are planning to go next.

Richie forces himself to stay seated, to try to keep his knee from jumping, to wait an appropriate amount of time. A _normal _amount of time.

Fuck it.

He stands, gut churning. “Bathroom,” he says to no one in particular, and shuffles around the coffee table, Bev lifting her feet and Ben tucking his away, until Richie can get to the door.

The hallway is not empty, milling with Jordanian students there for English classes or vocational training. He rushes through them, trying not to make eye contact with anyone. He passes Diyala at the front desk—guilt pangs in him for not saving her a piece of cake—and then he’s shoving into the maintenance hallway, on his way to the single bathrooms.

Once inside, he sits on the toilet, cold leaking through his jeans to the backs of his thighs. He shoves his glasses up into his hair, presses his fingers into his clenched eyes, and tries to breathe.

_I mean, I kinda thought Richie and I would go together._

_That the best you can do, Tozier?_

_You can keep going, too._

_Richie— please just—_

He scrubs hard at his cheeks, his eyes, seeing stars in the darkness. Blood is pounding in his throat, his breath coming out in shallow bursts.

How is he supposed to do this?

Just how the fuck is he supposed to do this?

He lets his palms drag down his face, feeling the pull against his eyelids, his lips. He can’t see himself in the foggy mirror but he imagines it’s not particularly pretty.

God. Just how many times is he going to hide in a bathroom from Eddie Kaspbrak?

Shakily, with a sigh, he stands, replacing his glasses on the bridge of his nose. He steps across the small, dingy room to the sink. Wets his hands with cold water. Pats them against his face, under his reddened eyes.

He does not look normal; he looks a fucking mess.

He inhales for a count of seven.

Holds it.

Lets it out.

He studies himself. His expression is raw, ripped apart. He can’t go out there looking like this. It’s his birthday. It’s his fucking birthday.

How the fuck is he supposed to do this?

He takes another breath. Watches it swell his ribs, his lanky, over-broad shoulders, and then deflate afterwards. He scrunches his face up as small as it can go, then expands it, mouth, eyes, jaw as big as possible, bigger than he thinks possible, until the joint beneath his ear cracks. He slaps his cheeks. He lifts a hand and slides it flat from his chin to his forehead, as though he’s wiping away the sad expression and leaving a plastered-on smile in its place.

He studies himself. Grinning.

It’s… better. A little maniacal but better.

With one last sigh, he reaches for the door handle and turns it, ready again to face everyone.

“Hey…”

Richie nearly jumps the fuck out of his skin.

It’s Eddie.

Eddie is standing there, _right there_, leaning against a stack of boxes that looks like they contain cleaning supplies. He’s looking up at Richie the way he did when Richie last opened a door and found Eddie unexpectedly on the other side: big, wary eyes from under dark eyebrows.

Richie’s heart gives a stuttering kick—_tha-thump—_against his ribs.

“H-hey,” he says; and, a little belatedly, “man. What’s up?”

Eddie’s face twitches uncertainly. Then something steely flickers in his eyes, something that has Richie stepping back and bumping against the door, feeling trapped.

“_I wanted to_, uh—”

The words seem to have tumbled out of Eddie’s mouth against his will, because he stops himself abruptly, thin lips pressed tight, skin pinched above his nose.

Richie watches him, barely breathing.

“Thanks. You. Thank you. For, uh… my phone…”

A tendril of understanding worms its way into Richie’s consciousness. “O-oh,” he breathes, relaxing minutely. He offers Eddie a shaky smile, glancing past him, wondering if he can inch away down the hallway. “Yeah, sure. Of course.”

“_And I’m_—”

Richie freezes.

Eddie scowls, glaring at a spot on the floor, but that steely glint forces him to go on: “—sorry for leaving without saying anything…”

And Richie’s heart does that dumb _tha-thump_ again. His face wants to crumple in disbelief, in hope. “W-what?”

“Well, I thought we— It just seemed like something we should—”

_Tha-thump, tha-tha-thump._

Slowly, Eddie meets his gaze. The skin around his eyes is scrunched, twisted with uncertainty. “…talk about?”

Richie swallows hard. Looks down. “Yeah,” he agrees slowly, carefully, examining his cuticles. They’re ripped up and dry, as always, because he never examines them. “Yeah, totally. Don’t want things to get… weird…”

“Right…”

Silence. Richie has to tune into the hum of conversation in the entryway, the low thrum of the fluorescent light above them, the drum of his fingers on the wall. _Tha-thump, tha-thump._

“So… what did you want to talk about?” Richie finally asks.

The sideways glare Eddie shoots him is severe. “I mean, us hooking up? Fucking _duh_?”

The laugh that drags out of Richie’s chest is sharp, rocketing into a cough. He hacks into his fist. Cracks open an eye to see Eddie still glaring, can’t help another cough-laugh at the utter lack of amusement. “Yeah, I did figure _that_ much. I’m not a complete moron.”

Eddie rolls his eyes. “Coulda fooled me.”

“Hey, it’s my birthday! I don’t have to take this abuse!”

A smile pulls at the corners of Eddie’s mouth. “Based on everything you’ve told me about people being mean to you, I think this is actually the best present I could give.”

Richie considers this, a finger tapping his chin. “…Touché.”

Eddie huffs, crossing his arms tight. “_Anyway_,” he says, his shoulders hiked defensively. “What did you, uh… What did you, uh…?”

Richie’s pulse hitches again, his mouth going dry. “Uhh… think…?” he offers. Maybe that’s the next word in that sentence.

“Yeah… about what happened.” Eddie is chewing on his lip again, _hard_, harder maybe than Richie’s ever seen.

He tears his eyes away.

“…I mean…” Richie rubs the back of his neck, letting his gaze alight on everything but Eddie: the stack of boxes, the janitor’s mop, a single yellow tack stuck into the drop ceiling. “Like… generally…?”

“Um. Yeah.”

He racks his brain for something to say. Something chill enough, something sincere enough, something not too fucking sincere by a long shot.

And Eddie stares at him, worrying, worrying.

Finally, he gives a curled-in shrug. “…Thumbs up?”

Eddie’s teeth go still on his lip. His look is piercing. “‘Thumbs up’?”

God, Richie wants so desperately to decipher that tone. Is it, _You seriously thought that was “thumbs up”? _Or, _you seriously only thought that was “thumbs up”? _The gulf in inflection has never seen so vast.

He lets his eyes roll down to the floor and then back to Eddie’s. “…Yeah?”

“What the _fuck _does ‘thumbs up’ mean?”

Richie exhales sharply. He makes himself grin. “Well, you see, Edward—”

“No, no, no, ugh, shut up, stop, forget it, stop.” Eddie’s hand is waving in the air in front of Richie’s face, like he can cast a spell to shut him up. Then he jams it under his other arm, scowling hard, hunching tight, sucking in air before he grits out: “I… I want to do it again.”

_Tha-tha-tha-tha—_

Richie feels like someone needs to brace their foot against his chest and yank hard at his cord to restart the lawnmower of his heart because right now the engine is turning and turning and just uselessly turning.

“You want to do it again,” he echoes, part of him just wanting the words to be repeated back. He can’t have heard that right, can he?

But Eddie nods. Once, carefully. “If you do.”

Richie’s brain fizzes. “If_ I_ do.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah…”

“Stop fucking repeating what I’m saying.”

“Sorry.” He blinks, his eyes coming back into focus. Eddie is watching him warily, a vulnerable look in his eyes when they dart away from Richie’s. And Richie…

Richie still wants some clarification.

Awkwardly, he pushes his glasses up his nose. They fall right back down again, slippery with the water from the sink. “Uhh… so you want to, like… keep hooking up?”

“Yeah, I…” Eddie huffs, frustrated. His foot begins to tap against the linoleum. “I didn’t think it would be a big deal, considering your whole, like…” He gestures ineffectually. “…M.O.”

_Huh?_ “My M.O.?”

“Yeah, your M.O.,” Eddie insists. “Your whole friends-with-benefits, ‘healthiest relationship you’ve ever had,’ no feelings, no expectations…” Again with the hand-waving. “_Thing_.”

And oh.

Oh, _right_. Richie _did_ say all that.

And now Eddie wants to keep hooking up. As friends.

That’s why he was being normal. Because no-strings-attached warrants _normal_. Because friends-with-benefits, no feelings, no expectations means _normal_. Because he knows Richie has friends he hooks up with, and they’ve only ever been friends, so why would he think this would be any different?

Because he still doesn’t know how Richie feels about him.

It hits him like a speeding chariot, the one that Greek god supposedly uses to tow the sun into position every morning. Abrupt, punching shock straight to his chest and then a burst of light, nearly luminous relief at not being as flayed open as he feels.

Eddie doesn’t know.

Eddie… doesn’t know?

Richie almost frowns, relief slowly being overshadowed by something like disappointment. How could he not _know_?

Then he feels it, in his front pocket.

A jolt. A vibration. A _buzz_.

Not Eddie’s this time, but all the same…

Richie clears his throat, shifting his feet. “I thought you were, uh…” _Straight._ “I mean, aren’t you, uh…” _In a relationship? _“Don’t you…?”

He glances at Eddie, hoping that his meaning has somehow been communicated through these aborted attempts at sentences, but Eddie’s eyes are huge in his face, uncertain, almost _scared _as he watches these sentences start and trail off.

Richie sighs. Looks down. Winces at his shoes.

“I mean, don’t you have a girlfriend?” he whispers.

Eddie doesn’t answer right away, but Richie can see movement. He’s rubbing one forearm with the opposite hand, shifting his weight. When Richie lifts his face to squint over top of his glasses, Eddie’s cheeks are red.

“We, uh, kind of had a fight,” Eddie says, not meeting Richie’s gaze. “And I don’t, uh… I’m not sure, but I don’t think we’re really, um…”

Richie’s stomach is on a rollercoaster all by itself, or maybe on a rocket ship, or else maybe it’s _in _the chariot. Yes, that’s probably it; he’s in the chariot now, holding on for dear life as Eddie drives them onward, streaking them both across the dawn-stained sky. “Oh.”

“Yeah…”

Richie pauses to think, but his thoughts have not yet caught up. His mind is a speeding blank. “…All right.”

“…So?” And Eddie’s turns back to Richie, his deep eyes speckled with gold, swimming in doubt. “_Do _you? Want to, I mean?”

And Richie realizes that if Eddie truly doesn’t know how Richie feels about him, then that means that Eddie is…

Eddie is going out on a limb, here. In a way that Richie has steadfastly refused to. In a way that Richie has been far too _afraid_ to.

And maybe Richie owes him some of that same honesty, right now. Maybe he ought to tell Eddie for once, unequivocally. Just so they’re on the same page. Maybe.

He closes his eyes. Takes a deep breath. Opens his eyes and his mouth and—

Eddie is looking back at him, vulnerability written in the stoop of his shoulders, the tightness of his arms, the slash of his wet lower lip and how Richie is suddenly aching to kiss it—

The breath leaves him in a rush: “I mean, _yeah_.”

Eddie’s eyebrows twitch, like they want to lift, like they want to unclench. His posture relaxes, just a little. Warily, he asks, “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Richie laughs, a little incredulous at Eddie. (At himself, for not saying what he meant to. At himself, for locking it up tight again inside his ribcage.) “If you’ll allow me to quote the great rhetorician Edward Spaghedward: Fucking duh.”

Eddie’s eyes roll at that, but his brow unknits, his arms uncross, his shoulders drop. He sighs. “You are fucking infuriating, you know that?”

“You never let me forget it, dude,” Richie says, grinning. “In fact, I’m pretty sure you must be having some sort of episode if you’re telling me you want to hook up again, all things considered.” He tilts his head back on a smirk, his eyelids half-shuttering his gaze. “Did I really blow your mind, Eds?”

And Eddie…

Eddie turns red.

“I— You— _No_, you _didn’t_,” he sputters, eyes on the floor.

_Tha-thump, tha-thump, tha-thump._

“You just— I never—”

Richie is smiling. He’s surprised to find himself sincerely smiling.

_Tha-thump, tha-thump, tha-thump._

“I didn’t know that—” Eddie suddenly, viciously, bites down on his lip. When he notices the grin on Richie’s face, he glares. “Shut up.”

Richie’s hands fly up. “I didn’t say anything!”

“Yeah, well. Don’t.” Eddie jabs a finger at his sternum. “_Ever_.”

Richie mimes zipping his lips and throwing away the key. He crosses his heart and holds up three fingers in the Boy Scout salute, for good measure. “Mm-mm-mm.”

Eddie sighs, his shoulders sagging. He takes a step to the side, cranes his neck to look down the hallway like he’s considering giving the fuck up, finally taking his leave of the ridiculous person that is Richie. Then he steps back and his eyes glint and—

And his palm splays hard over Richie’s sternum, shoves him back behind the tower of paper towels, and then his mouth is on Richie’s.

It’s only for a moment and a half, the insistent heat of Eddie’s lips and tongue. Just barely long enough for Richie to kiss back, to taste the chocolate cake and Nescafe behind his teeth, to grip sweaty fingers around Eddie’s bicep and revel in the heat lancing up his spine.

Then just as suddenly as he was on him, Eddie is gone, face red as he swipes over his fuzzy hair. He glances at Richie sideways for just a moment.

Quietly, rushed, eyes averted, he spills out: “Oh, and, uh— happy birthday.”

Then he’s marching away, ears pink and the beginnings of a self-satisfied smile tugging at his lips.

And Richie…

Richie catches himself against the wall. Closes his eyes. Breathes. Wills his fluttering heart to stop bruising itself against the inside of his ribs. To be _normal_.

Normal, normal, normal.

(Not normal. Not normal at all.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this one took so long to get out! i was riding high on finally getting to the first kiss and gave myself a break that turned into… a lot longer break than i thought.
> 
> thanks as always to [@jajs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jajs/pseuds/jajs) for the beta read!
> 
> i’m [@tempestbreak_](https://twitter.com/tempestbreak_) on twitter.
> 
> arabic glossary:  
_‘afwan_: excuse me; sorry; you’re welcome  
_‘ammiya_: colloquial Arabic; dialect  
_‘an jad_: really  
_akhi_: my brother  
_away<: yes, yeah [_‘ammiya_ only]  
_biddak_: you [m., sing.] want  
_mish mushkila_: no problem  
_na‘iman_: lit., blessed; used to comment that someone has gotten a haircut or taken a shower; response is _allah yen‘am ‘alayk_, lit., god bless _you_  
_low samaht(i)_: please [_‘ammiya_ only]  
_sabah al-kheir_: good morning  
_sabah an-noor_: good morning [typical response to _sabah al-kheir_]  
_sena hilwa yaa gameel_: happy birthday [lit., sweet year, beautiful]  
_umm(i)_: (my) mother_


	18. march iv: there’s nothing wrong with just a little little fun

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from “digital love” by daft punk

**spaghedward: **are you TRYING to make it obvious that you're not paying attention?

Richie’s eyes flick across the classroom. 

Eddie, at the table opposite him, raises an eyebrow over his laptop.

Richie smothers a smirk.

**richie: **i am so paying attention  
israel is dicks to the palestinians  
occupation, intifada, king hussein was a baller etc etc etc  
**spaghedward: **…  
**richie:** buuut also i need to get my charmander to evolve before i fight misty  
im sure dr musa would understand  
**spaghedward:** what is that  
is that pokemon?  
**richie:** aww eds u got it in 1  
im so proud of u  
**spaghedward: **don't you need like a game boy or something to play that?  
**richie:** now that WOULD make it obvious  
i use an emulator  
its like a thing that lets u download old console games and play them on ur computer  
**spaghedward:** is that legal?  
**richie: **ur cute  
**spaghedward:** shut up  
**richie:** cute cute cute!  
**spaghedward:** ugh

Eddie may have a point, though. The itch at the back of his neck tells Richie it's been too long since he last tried to appear believably interested in the material.

So he sits back in his seat and turns to the front of the classroom. Spends a few seconds making sustained, contemplative eye contact with Dr. Musa Shehadeh, the professor for their Arab-Israeli Relations class, as he rambles on. He throws in a few nods, some frowns, one long, pensive chin-scratch for good measure.

Then, nodding as though he’s ruminating on the last statistic quoted, he returns to his laptop. He’s really hoping to catch a Grass-type Pokemon before he—

**spaghedward:** we should nail down our plans for Lebanon  
i'm looking at flights righ tnow  
**richie: **oh yeah?  
how much  
**spaghedward:** like $200 roundtrip  
**richie:** yeah thsts what bill said  
thats not bad  
**spaghedward:** yeah…  
it's a little steep i guess  
**richie:** i mean  
we dont have to go  
**spaghedward:** do you not want to?  
**richie:** no i def do  
for sure want to go<strike>  
</strike>but like if its too much  
**spaghedward:** i'll figure something out  
**richie:** we dont have to  
oh ok  
u sure?  
**spaghedward:** yeah i mean  
it's not like it'll ever be easier to go to lebanon than it is right now  
**richie:** true  
**spaghedward: **if i don't go now i'll probably never go  
so  
**richie:** ya thats fair  
**spaghedward:** plus bev said that it's like the best time to be in beirut  
like it was kind of cold when they were there but late march maybe we’ll be able to go to the beach  
**richie:** all great points  
**spaghedward: **…  
……………..  
…………………………………….  
**richie:** ??  
**spaghedward:** you're still playing pokemon aren't you  
**richie:** what part about evolving my charmander did u not understand, edward  
**spaghedward:** THE PART WHERE I'M TRYIN GTO MAKE PLANS WITH YOU AND YOU'RE PLAYIN GA STUPID GAME  
**richie: **ok 1st of all i am all in for making plans and i was paying 100% more to u than to dr musa  
2nd of all have u ever even played pokemon  
**spaghedward:** no of course i have not PLAYED POKEMON i have a life  
**richie:** oh so u went outside as a kid?  
i bet ur mom loved that tell me about all ur outsidea dventures edward 

Eddie glares at him across the room. Richie is already grinning at him over his laptop.

**spaghedward: **just because my mom didn't let me go outside that much doesn't mean i didn't have a life  
**richie:** hmm ok so then how did you spend your indoor time edward enlighten me pls  
replicating scientific studies??  
tracking down the zodiac killer????????  
FIGURING OUT WHT HAPPENED TO JONBENET RAMSAY??????????  
**spaghedward:** no i  
STOP THINKNIG ABOUT JONBENET RAMSAY  
**richie:** NEVER  
**spaghedward:** ugh  
k ho wmany nights do you want to spend in beirut  
YOU tell ME  
and where do you want to go while we're there  
NOT hezbollah town  
**richie:** bill and bev really seemed to like  
dammit  
**spaghedward:** whatever it's called  
baalbek?  
my mom would actually kill me if i went to a known hezbollah stronghold  
**richie:** fine by me  
we can also always  
u no  
wing it  
**spaghedward:** wing it?  
in lebanon.  
**richie:** ya like  
just decide how we feel day by day  
im sure theres enough stuff to do in beirut itself  
its not like we need to come up with tons of shit to do  
places to go, roman ruins to see  
**spaghedward:** yeah i guess so  
musa for sure knows you're not paying attention by the way  
he's like lookin gat you  
**richie:** o fuq  
one sec then  
**spaghedward:** ?  
**richie: **gotta give musa the ol razzle dazzle

Richie raises his hand. Out of the corner of his eye, he catches Eddie staring at him.

Dr. Musa is a wizened, white-haired man with a lumpy, bulbous nose and glasses rimmed thickly enough to put Richie’s to shame. He speaks like his mouth is perpetually parched, and he contributes seemingly dozens of letters to the editor of the _Jordan Times_ every week, which he forwards to their personal emails. Richie reads the headlines and then promptly shuffles them to his “Musa Musings” folder.

At Richie’s hand-raise, Dr. Musa pauses in his discussion of the First Intifada. He blinks slowly and croaks out, “Yes. Richard.”

Richie lowers his hand. “Isn’t that kind of like what Israel just did, with Biden’s visit?”

He’s pretty sure that’s only tangentially related to whatever the current subject actually is, but Dr. Musa’s dark eyes glitter regardless, delighted at the unexpected participation. He waves a knobby hand in Richie’s direction. “Could you elaborate on that, please, Richard. For the class.”

“Oh, sure,” Richie says, leaning back in the rolling chair. He can feel Eddie’s eyes on him. “Yeah. So, Biden just visited Jerusalem to, like, confirm that the U.S. still likes Israel and all, even though we asked them to put a halt on building all settlements in the West Bank.”

He allows his eyes to rove over the room. Bev is paying him no attention whatsoever; he suspects she’s finishing up some assignment for her business class. Ditto Bill—who is staring at his screen in something like despair, a hand over his mouth—and Ben—who glances up only when he senses Richie’s gaze upon him and very visibly pretends to care. (_No theater background_, Richie scoffs internally.) Mike and Stan are listening impassively, Stan nodding as though none of this is news to him. Eddie, on the other hand…

Eddie is staring at him. Steadily. Nearly unblinking. Practically agape.

Richie gives him a smirk as he goes on. “But basically as soon as he touched down, Israel announced they were gonna be building new settlements in, uhh…” He cocks his head at Dr. Musa. “Where was it again?”

Distinctly, Dr. Musa replies, “East Jerusalem.”

“Right, yeah, East Jerusalem.” Richie nods, returning his self-satisfied gaze to Eddie, whose mouth is beginning to twitch. “So it’s not _technically _against U.S. policy, but the timing of it still makes it seem like it’s meant to embarrass Biden. Kind of a slap in the face.”

At the front of the room, Dr. Musa is nodding. “Yes, that is certainly how Biden seemed to take it,” he agrees ponderously.

Eddie’s pen clatters loudly on the desk.

Everyone looks up, even Bev. Dr. Musa wets his dry, pursed lips as he turns to Eddie. “Question, Edward?”

“Yes, I have a question,” Eddie says, his voice strained with obvious effort to hold back his frustration. “How is _that_ at _all_ like Israel deploying eighty thousand soldiers to the West Bank to put down a mostly peaceful protest movement during the First Intifada?”

Oh, so that’s what they were talking about?

Barely missing a beat, Richie shrugs. “It just goes to show that Israel will do whatever it deems necessary to preserve its own security interests, regardless of what the U.S. wants.” He tilts his head at Eddie, raises his eyebrows. “I dunno, I guess by this point you’d just think that the U.S.-Israeli relationship would have… _evolved_.”

He winks. 

Eddie’s face goes nearly purple with rage.

“Mm, yes,” Dr. Musa decrees, oblivious to the lightning crackling behind Eddie’s eyes. “You could draw a parallel. Now, we move on to the tactics employed by the IDF in the late 1980s…”

And as Dr. Musa returns to his PowerPoint, Richie hears furious typing from across the room seconds before his laptop screen blinks.

**spaghedward: **i hate you  
SO much  
you are the worst person i've ever met  
**richie:** u love me :-*  
now hush, a wild oddish just appeared >:D

***

**spaghedward:** hey

The message comes through while Richie is lounging in a chair at Aroma, surrounded by the hazy smoke of the hookah he and Bev are sharing while pretending to do homework. Lazily he closes the emulator window and clicks on the flashing tab of his Gmail.

**spaghedward: **bev suggested a hostel for us in beirut  
she sent me the contact info it's called al-nazih  
do u want to call or should i?  
**richie:** i renamed my charmeleon  
after u  
**spaghedward:** excuse me  
is this pokemon again  
**richie:** yes  
**spaghedward:** is charmeelon a good one  
**richie:** yes  
my main bro  
like u eds <3  
**spaghedward:** well…  
in that case  
thanks?  
for naming it after me??  
**richie:** ur welcome  
his name is spaghetti  
**spaghedward:** ……….  
**richie:** bc he is a SPICY MEATABALL  
get it???  
**spaghedward:** no  
**richie:** bc he is fire type!!!!  
he SPICY eds  
**spaghedward:** ugh  
**richie:** if u played pokemon u would find that very funny i guarantee  
VERY chuckalicious  
**spaghedward:** ughhhhhhhhh  
i hate chuckalicious  
never say it again  
**richie:** lol u got it  
how about chuckalightful  
chuckalectable  
**spaghedward: **you cannot begin to imagine the face i am making at the screen right now  
**richie:** is it like this: >:[  
**spaghedward:** …  
no  
not at all  
**richie:** >:]  
neway thanks for tracking down a hostel  
i will call them  
brb  
**spaghedward:** u calling them now?  
**richie:** nah just going back to the name rater  
to rename my charmeleon chuckalicious  
**spaghedward:** >:[

***

**spaghedward:** so did your mom leave for jerusalem?

Richie cranes his neck back to his laptop. He, Mike, and Saleh have been shooting the shit in the lounge while the business class is in session, tossing the soccer ball around much more carefully than he and Eddie did.

“One sec, guys,” Richie says, holding up a hand with the tips of all five fingers touching in the sign for _wait_. “I think Eds wants to chat about our trip.”

“Have you gotten your travel request forms in yet?” Saleh asks.

“Yes, one hundred percent,” Richie lies, dragging his computer into his lap. “Totally unrelated, would you happen to have any extras of those lying around? Great paper airplanes.”

**richie:** chatting during class eds??  
for shame  
**spaghedward:** …  
**richie: **yupp she gone  
said goodbye last night after dinner with the host fam  
**spaghedward:** how was that?  
**richie:** really nice! my head is fucking fried tho  
from translating so much  
**spaghedward:** wow you translated everything between them?  
**richie:** ya it was perhaps the greatest feat my brain has ever performed  
**spaghedward:** i believe that  
**richie:** hardy har  
**spaghedward:** haha  
well  
i meant like actually  
**richie:** oh  
really?  
**spaghedward:** yeah that shit would be hard  
cause your host family doesn't speak like any english right?  
**richie:** some but not a lot  
like they got some stuff  
fortunately bill was there but still  
ti was MY mom i felt like i had to do most of it lol  
**spaghedward:** what did she think?  
**richie:** omg she cried in the cab afterwards so much lmao  
about how grown up i am and how proud she is  
**spaghedward:** aw  
**richie:** ya shes embarrassing lol  
but then at one point she turned to me and was like  
"what was the deal with ur host mom acting like she knew soooo much about what u liked to eat??"  
"it was just chicken and rice! i could do THAT!"  
**spaghedward:** lol  
**richie:** ya hahahaha  
mom fight  
battle to the death  
**spaghedward:** i can't even imagine my mom meeting my host "dad"  
**richie:** "dad"?  
**spaghedward:** yeah  
**richie:** y the quotes spaghetti?  
**spaghedward: **najib is so young ben and i feel weird calling him dad  
we usually just call him najib to his face  
**richie:** rly?  
**spaghedward:** yeah and his wife is even younger  
like almost our age  
**richie:** whoa  
i didnt know  
**spaghedward: **yeah it's weird  
**richie:** and mrs. k would not be a fan i imagine  
**spaghedward:** haha no  
probably wouldn't trust them to take care of me  
**richie:** i mean  
ur 21  
ur the oldest one of us actually lol  
**spaghedward:** ha yeah but  
you know how she is  
**richie:** ya i mean i can extrapolate lol  
its just hard to imagine i guess  
**spaghedward:** our moms are very different  
**richie:** no kidding lol  
do u talk to urs a lot?  
**spaghedward:** i email with her but her internet is terrible  
not good enough fo rskype  
which is fine by me actually  
like i said we had kind of a falling out over the summer  
**richie:** im surprised she didnt get all new internet just for ur trip lol  
**spaghedward:** she did  
**richie:** oh  
**spaghedward:** she got broadband when i told her i was coming here  
she used to have dial-up  
**richie:** holy shit  
**spaghedward:** yeah  
i had one of those childlocked AOL accounts for all of high school  
**richie:** seriously???  
**spaghedward:** yeah  
i mean i also had this account  
but she didn't know about it and i had to sign up for it on a school computer  
used it for all of my college applications  
**richie:** wow  
**spaghedward:** yeah  
i didn't want he rknowing iw as applying to like NYU and stuff  
**richie:** jesus  
**spaghedward:** yeah  
**richie:** well now i have to ask  
what was ur aol account  
**spaghedward:** no  
**richie:** pls  
pls pls pls plsssssssssss tell me it was something embarrassing  
tell me it was eddiebear88 or something  
**spaghedward:** no  
**richie:** god when would that have been  
like 1998?? when ppl were getting AOL??  
**spaghedward:** wtf no  
not where i'm from  
maybe in cali  
**richie:** DONT  
**spaghedward:** maybe in THE OC  
**richie:** DO NOT  
NO  
NOT BETTER  
**spaghedward:** >:]

***

**richie: **hey fyi the al-nazih lady bumped up her prices and wanted 40 a night for a double  
so i found another rplace thats 25 a night if we confirm ahead of time

Richie drums his fingers on his textbook as he waits. It’s a little late to be Gchatting Eddie, he supposes. It’s after dinner, both of them likely holed up in their respective homes for the night. But then again, the constant stream of instant messaging has kind of become a _thing_ over the past few days.

It’s not weird, really. It makes sense, he supposes, to switch to Gchat, what with their need to plan an entire trip to another country in a little more than a week. It’s also free, a huge advantage over their pay-as-you-go mobiles. It’s also much easier to pretend to be paying attention in class.

On the other hand, it’s much harder to remind himself not to try to talk to Eddie for literally every waking hour of every day.

When the Gmail tab starts flashing about twenty minutes later, Richie clicks on it almost instantly, his stomach lighting up with relieved excitement.

**spaghedward:** hey sorry just saw this  
that sounds good to me  
are you still there?  
i was playing pokemon

Okay, so his jaw drops a little.

**richie: **!!!!!!!!!  
you WHAT?????  
**spaghedward:** yeah i thought id see what the big deal is  
**richie:** ajsdkflasjdfklejaksldfa  
EDS!!!!!!!!!!  
omg i cant believe ur playing!!!!!!!!!  
what starter did u pick???????  
**spaghedward:** the turtle one  
**richie:** omg of COURSE u pick squirtle  
its super effective against charmander  
**spaghedward:** i know, i googled it  
**richie:** asdjksdl ofc u did  
i will still beat u in a battle tho  
just WAIT til i show u the bond i have with my pokemon  
**spaghedward:** guess we will see  
**richie:** >:D  
but ok this hostel situation  
**spaghedward:** yes  
**richie:** is pretty HOSTILE  
**spaghedward:** hahahaha  
never speak again  
**richie:** :D  
u love me so much eds its emBARRASSING for u  
**spaghedward: **>:[  
i really just want something we can put on our travel forms for huda  
**richie:** i mean it doesnt really matter  
well be in beirut, she knows that  
**spaghedward:** i guess  
**richie:** i can fill urs out if u want  
and turn it in with mine  
i picked up a couple copies while u were in class  
**spaghedward:** really?  
**richie:** ya no prob  
i just want u to focus on whats important  
**spaghedward:** i hope you don't mean pokmeon  
**richie:** POKEEEEEEMOOONNNNNN  
(gotta catch em all!)  
**spaghedward:** please stop  
it is fun though  
**richie: **:DDDDDDDDDDDDDD  
**spaghedward:** and not to brag but i fucking destroyed the firs tgym guy  
so pretty sure i'm a prodigy

***

**spaghedward: **OKAY WHAT THE HEL LIS THIS FUCKER’S PROBLEM  
WHY DOES HE KEEP FUCKIGN CHALLENGING ME  
HE KNOWS MY POKEMON ARE LIKE FUCKING DEAD  
I JUST GOT THE FUCK OUR OF MT MOON JUST LET ME GET TO THE POKECENTER YOU ASSHOEL  
THIS COCKSUCKER MOTHERFUCKER WHY ARE ALL HIS POKEMON SO FUCKING HIGH LEVEL WHAT THE FUCK  
HE ONLY HAS GOOD ONES BECAUSE HE PICKED AFTER I DID THIS FUCKING ASSHOLE I SWEAR TO GOD I’M GONNA FUCKING END THIS GAME  
I BLACKED OUT!!!! FUCK!!!!!!!!

***

In between gym battles and attempting to catch ’em all—which escalates to the point that in every class they share, Eddie is blatantly frowning and nearly breathing fire at his laptop screen—their trip to Lebanon is almost fully planned. They have flights; they have a hostel; they have nebulous plans to go to Byblos one of the days, and maybe Mt. Lebanon and a place called Jeita Grotto that’s supposed to have been one of the finalists for the New Seven Natural Wonders of the World, if they feel up to it.

_If they feel up to it_.

This phrase.

This is the phrase that they say back and forth to each other but that Richie doesn’t know exactly how to interpret. He knows what Eddie said on his birthday, by the mop and paper towels. Eddie said he wanted to keep hooking up. Eddie also wants to go to Beirut together, wants to stay in a hostel together. Eddie took Richie’s suggestion of “winging it” and hasn’t brought up day-to-day plans since.

_Eddie_.

Which, in Richie’s mind, begs the question: _Exactly how much sex does Eddie expect them to have in Beirut?_

Obviously, Richie’s not against the answer being _copious amounts_. He’s not against the answer being _none nada zilch zippo_, either. That’s fine. If all Eddie had in mind when he said he wanted to “do it again” was sucking face while Richie gives him a handy, that’s fine too. Richie has always been a _take what he can get and don’t ask for more _kinda guy. A _don't even ask if there is any more_ kinda guy.

Because here’s the thing: he really likes Eddie. Not just as a fuck buddy or a potential boyf—

(…_whew_. Okay. Get it together, Tozier. Can’t say the word, apparently. Can’t even think the word.)

(Okay. Deep breath. In… out. Aaaand we’re rewinding… —fyob laitnetop a ro yddub kcuf a sa tsuj toN…)

Not just as a fuck buddy or a potential… more-than-fuck-buddy… but as an honest-to-god friend. And Richie knows in his gut that there’s something magical about the seven of them here, the Losers, _al-Fashileen_, and even though he wants to kiss Eddie and make him come and touch his fuzzy goosedown hair, Eddie, as a _friend_, is nevertheless essential to that magic.

So, above all, Eddie is a friend. Just like Carla was. And just like with Carla, Richie can fake it ’til he makes it.

Because Richie knows how to do casual. It’s some of the greatest success Richie’s had with relationships! He wasn’t lying about that! He knows how to stuff feelings down his throat, how to get both feet in there and jump on them until they squish down small and then pile more bullshit on top of them so no one even knows they were ever there. Not even Carla.

And speaking of Carla, he hasn’t told her anything yet. He knows how that conversation will go. She’ll scrunch up her nose and say, “This is just like Connor,” and Richie will say, “No, no, this is nothing like Connor,” and Carla will say, “...” because she’s eight thousand miles away and can’t give Richie the look that says, _We both know you’re lying, Tozier, why are you doing this to yourself again?_

But here’s the thing: he’s not.

He’s _not_!

This is _nothing_ like Connor! For one, Richie and Eddie are friends. Richie and Connor were never friends; they were—uhh…

Well, not friends. That’s for sure! So: different.

For another, they both know what they want out of this. Chill, no feelings, friends-with-benefits. Just sex. Or not! Like he said, maybe Eddie just wants to kiss and maybe, like, jerk each other off. That’s fine, too. Richie wants that. Richie wants to grip Eddie’s slippery-hard dick in his hand, drown in Eddie’s moans and panting breaths, fall asleep with Eddie curled up next to him in his arms.

Hey, it’s not weird! He and Carla cuddle all the time!

So yeah, it’s nothing like Connor. It’s like Carla. _C-A-R-L-A._

“And what about the fact that he has a girlfriend, Richie?” in-person Carla would ask then, neck craned up into his face so she could look him in the averted eyes even though she’s nearly a full foot shorter than he is. “A girlfriend that he’s still Facebook official with, Richie? Huh? How is _that_ not like Connor?”

And, well… as soon as he has an answer to that one, maybe he’ll tell Carla what’s going on.

Because that’s another thing they haven’t talked about. The big, blonde elephant in the five-thousand-mile-wide room.

Myra.

That day, by the mop and the paper towels, Richie asked about her, and Eddie said, “We kind of had a fight,” and, “I don’t think we’re really…” And Richie didn’t pry. Richie didn’t pry because those sentences sounded vaguely positive. Those sentences sounded like something he could project his most optimistic hopes onto.

_We kind of had a big fight (and broke up)._

_I don’t think we’re really (together anymore)._

They don’t talk about any of that.

Instead, they talk about class. They talk about how they’re getting to the airport. They talk about Pokemon.

Basically, they don’t talk about anything.

***

The van rumbling to a stop rouses Richie from sleep. Next to him, Eddie shifts and raises his bleary head.

“Are we there yet?” he asks, licking his lips.

Richie blinks heavily, peering out the tinted back windows at the stone facade of the building before them. “Looks like it,” he mutters. “Let’s get biblical.”

It’s the Tuesday before spring break: the day of their excursion to the Christian religious sites of Jordan and the Dead Sea. It also requires Richie, Eddie, and the other newbies to wake up at—well, they already have to wake up at the ass-crack of dawn to make it to their eight o’clock classes. This is more like (if Richie has his metaphors right) waking up at the winking butthole of dawn.

When he tells Eddie as much after they’re solidly situated in the back row of the van, he gets a bleary glare and an exhausted flop of a backhand to the middle of his chest.

Their first stop is an early Byzantine church, and Richie is barely conscious for it. The only one among them managing a modicum of enthusiasm is Mike, carefully studying the sixth-century floor mosaic that is the church’s claim to fame. Ben takes pictures of Richie, Bev, and Eddie draped over pews, looking half-dead and wincing in the face of the flash.

(Richie doesn’t often wish for someone to delete a picture of him—normally, he figures it can’t get much worse—but for these he makes an exception. His hair is frizzy from recent shampooing, the pores on his chin bright red where he shaved them this morning. Clearly sprucing up to try to impress a certain someone was a fool’s errand.)

Things begin to look up a bit after Bev notices a bodega nearby that’s selling Turkish coffee. The five of them swarm the shop, desperately sucking down the thick, bitter sludge in a tired huddle. It reminds Richie of their orientation week, when Eddie tried to drink it like an espresso shot and resurfaced sputtering, with muddy grit coating his mouth and tongue.

Already feeling minutely more energized, Richie turns to him with a grin. “Hey, Eds, remember when you—”

Eddie only holds up a hand. “Don’t even start, Trashmouth.”

For some reason, that’s the funniest thing to Richie. He has to suppress giggles as they return the tiny cups to the shop owner and climb back into the van.

***

Their second stop is Mount Nebo, the spot from which Moses supposedly gained his first glimpse of the Promised Land. They hike up the paved, tree-lined pathway, ducking to overlooks for pictures and reading plaques as they pass them.

Eddie is trudging along dutifully beside Richie, both far behind the others and still half-asleep though perking up with the exercise. They’re quiet but for Richie’s light humming, a Gorillaz song that they dozed to in the car, the plodding pace of their footfalls mirroring the lazy beat of the song.

Then Eddie jumps practically four feet sideways, nearly knocking Richie the fuck over.

“Holy _shit_, the fuck—” Eddie exclaims, his hand suddenly tangled in Richie’s shirt.

“Whoa, Eds, what—?”

He sees it then, the flash of white beyond the tree line. A garbled noise sounds from the surrounding forest. They both stare in horror, clutching each other, and then…

_It _emerges.

A turkey.

A _wild_ turkey, feathers mottled white and wattle bright red and wriggling as its oblong head jerks to and fro. It fixes them with one beady eye as it crosses the path, picking its way over the sandy pavement.

“What the _fuck!?_” Eddie shouts as those mottled white feathers disappear back into the underbrush.

Richie laughs so hard he feels it echoing in his ribs.

***

The third stop on their tour of biblical Jordan is the river itself, the one where Jesus was supposed to have been… born? Or maybe baptized or something? Richie can barely remember—all those years of half-hearted Catholic church attendance didn’t _super _stick in his head—but Mike knows, he’s sure, and would tell him if he cared to ask. However, when they come upon the oh-so-famous River Jordan, all Richie can think is…

“Ew.” Eddie’s nose is wrinkled as he eyes the so-called river.

“My thoughts exactly, Edward,” Richie agrees solemnly.

In the river’s defense, there hasn’t been a lot of rain in recent months. Or… years. It _is_ Jordan, after all. Still, Richie thinks that if _he _were Jesus, the River Jordan is probably on the short list for Worst Baptism Sites ever.

The water—little more than mud, to be honest—moves at barely a trickle through the trench. Scraggly bushes thrust up through the surrounding dirt, snagging on Richie’s jeans and catching stickers on his shoelaces. Across from the dusty landing where they’ve come to observe the Jordanian side of the “river,” though, they can easily glimpse a sleek, concrete Israeli viewing platform, topped with a waving blue-and-white flag and surrounded by razor wire.

Richie turns to the rest of the group and shrugs. “Uhh… picture?”

Ben hands his nice camera to Huda, and the five of them scrunch in between some of the green-brown scrub lining the riverbed. Afterwards, when they peer over Ben’s shoulder to look at it, Mike says encouragingly, “Well. At least _we _look good.”

“The shitty river photobombed us,” Bev complains.

Huda smiles at them in commiseration. “Yes, the River Jordan tends to be one of the less exciting places we go on our excursions,” she admits, “but it’s not like we can really have a tour of _biblical Jordan _without seeing it.”

Eddie is still frowning at the image on Ben’s camera. His mouth is set in a petulant purse. “I’m not really that short, am I?”

“Nah,” Richie says, clapping him on the back. “You were standing in a ditch. That everyone else managed to avoid.”

“Fuck off.”

“The rest of us were on stilts. Even Bev, she’s just that tiny.”

“Fuck _off_, Richie.”

***

By the time they all pile back into the van to go to their fourth and final destination, the sun is high in the sky, the breeze slight and warm as it streams in through Saleh’s open window. Richie’s iPod has tinny little speakers that try valiantly to play music at a volume everyone can hear. Bev begs him to blast “All Star” and then the song from _The Nightmare Before Christmas_ where Jack first arrives in Christmastown. Richie tries to fit new lyrics to it (_What’s this? What’s this? There’s ruins everywhere / What’s this? What’s this? Is that the call to prayer?_) that have Ben in stitches and even Eddie hiding a laugh behind his hand.

By the time the van pulls into the parking lot, all of them are raring to go. Sweaty from the van and Eddie’s insistent proximity, Richie longs for crashing waves and a bracing spray of saltwater.

The beach they arrive at is private, which Huda explains doesn’t mean the same thing it does in the States. Basically, it’s private insofar anyone can go as long as they pay, but admission allows them access to amenities: a changing room, a little canteen, showers, and a pool, not to mention a souvenir shop, and the program even paid for a lunch in the restaurant, a buffet of traditional Jordanian fare.

“_Really _traditional,” Saleh says, a glint in his eye as they grab plates and start toward an enormous, fragrant dish filled with rice and meat. “They have _mansaf_.”

None of them have heard of it, so Saleh explains. _Mansaf _is the national dish of Jordan, made of lamb cooked in fermented yogurt and served over rice. He dishes out a heaping helping of rice and shredded meat onto the plate Mike offers, and then spoons yogurt over top from the nearby tureen.

“It’s a Bedouin dish,” Saleh goes on, clearly pleased to be showing off his salt-of-the-earth, not-just-a-city-slicker Jordanian cred. He tucks some thin flat bread under the rice, “Typically, you’re supposed to eat it with your hands, using the bread as a scoop. And only with your right hand; it’s rude to eat from the communal plate with your left.”

“Well, if I had to use my right hand, I hope everyone would be cool with me spilling yogurt all over the communal plate,” Mike laughs.

They all settle in at the table outside on the stone patio. The afternoon sun is bright in the sky, but attendance at the beach is sparse; it’s a Tuesday, after all. Some Jordanian families lounge by the pool, women fully dressed in black overseeing laughing children.

His plate balanced on the very corner of the table, between Bev and Ben, Richie takes a big bite. “Wow, Saleh,” he exclaims instantly, muffled through the rice, “this _mansaf_ is the bomb!”

Saleh blinks, his eyebrows lifting. “O-oh?”

“Seriously! What’s ‘bomb’ in Arabic?” He turns to Eddie but doesn’t wait for an answer. “_Infijar_?”

“It’s _qunbulah _but maybe—”

“_Al-mansaf huwa al-qunbulah, yaa Saleh, ‘an jad.”_

“—but _maybe_,” Eddie tries again, more loudly, “don’t say the word ‘bomb’ repeatedly in a public place in _Jordan_—”

“‘The bomb’ means it’s good,” Ben tells Saleh. He turns back to Eddie with a grin. “Sorry, I meant, ‘the B-word’ means it’s good.”

Eddie throws a hand up, exasperated.

“Okay,” Saleh laughs, relaxing. “I thought so, based on, you know, inflection.”

“Yeah,” says Richie. “In fact, this is _so _good, I’d even go so far as to say this is the B-word-diggity.”

Eddie groans beside him.

***

Once lunch is over, it’s time to swim. When Eddie starts chewing his bottom lip about swimming so soon after eating, Huda and Saleh reassure him that it would be nearly impossible to drown in the Dead Sea, a piece of information that he receives with a worried expression that makes Richie snicker.

The private beach’s changing rooms are more like gym lockers—rows and rows of individual cabins along one wall, lockboxes across the other. Benches line the center of the space, where some half-dressed, middle-aged men sit and chat. When Richie, Eddie, and the others enter, they go silent, eyeing them as they find their own changing closets; conversation starts up again in hushed tones once the doors are closed.

Figuring out what to wear to a beach in Jordan was its own minefield. In general, shorts are verboten. Richie’s calves haven’t seen the light of day in two months; already inclined to paleness, they look nearly pearlescent under the lights of the changing room as he slides on his faded Hawaiian-print trunks. They’re not his most scandalous swimming attire by any means—he’s only half-ashamed to admit that on a dare he did once go to Venice Beach in a lime green Borat swimsuit—but there’s still something about baring his knees again in public that makes his heart race.

He balls up his pants and pulls on his t-shirt, hoping no one will let out a scandalized gasp when he walks out.

He exits at roughly the same time as Ben, who is wearing some sensible navy trunks that cut off above his surprisingly muscular knees.

It’s about this time that Richie wonders if he will ever be able to see someone’s knees in the wild without gaping, or if Jordan has changed him irrevocably.

“Nice gams,” Richie calls over, hoping that the word is obscure enough that the men on the benches won’t understand. He can feel their eyes on him as he grins at Ben.

“This is weird,” Ben replies quietly, visibly uncomfortable. He slouches and tugs at his shorts, as though he can somehow will them to grow an extra inch or two of fabric.

Impulsively, Richie hooks his thumbs into the waistband of his own trunks and hikes them up to his belly button, baring pale inches of hairy thigh. His blood is thumping as he plants his hands on his hip.

“There,” he says, very pointedly ignoring the stares he feels from the silent men, “now no one’ll be looking at yours, Haystack. Now c’mon, I’m planning to go full Hasselhoff.”

Ben’s eyebrows are arched high on his forehead, a surprised, grateful smile spreading on his face as the two of them leave the changing room.

They find the rest of their crew waiting a few feet away, chatting in the sun. Bev is wearing a translucent shift dress over her bikini, a pristine white top with royal purple bottoms that Richie’s pretty sure will quickly have Ben forgetting all about the length of his own shorts. Mike is the only one of them seemingly confident enough to emerge from the changing rooms shirtless. He stands, laughing with Saleh, somehow looking even taller bare-chested and in flip-flops. (Does that make sense? Richie doesn’t think it makes sense, but such is Mike Hanlon: his hotness defies physics.)

It takes him a moment to locate Eddie. He finds him hunched in the shade of the high fence delineating this beach from the neighboring one. He’s still dressed in his t-shirt for the day, plain white, and red swim shorts that have a colorful little decal on the hip, lines of yellow, green, and blue. The fair hair of his legs is slicked down with sunscreen, which he is preoccupied with slathering onto his arms and face, a light wrinkle between his eyebrows as he works his hands over his skin.

“Hey, can I get summa that, Eds?” Richie calls as he strides over, flip-flops slapping the cement.

He sees a split-second of annoyance flash over Eddie’s face. Can almost _feel _the _Get your own, numbnuts, _that’s about to spill through his teeth.

Then Eddie’s shoulders release. He shoots Richie a half-hearted glare and grumbles, “When I’m done.”

Richie leans on against the unvarnished slats of wood beside Eddie to wait while he listens to Mike chat with Huda and Saleh. Mike has apparently been to the Dead Sea already, albeit a different beach; his and Stan’s host family took them a few weekends prior, so he knows the deal better than the rest of them. No wonder he’s looking a little more comfortable in his bare skin.

Richie wonders absentmindedly just how torturous that host family visit was for ol’ Stanley.

Although he’s aware he shouldn’t be quite so smug, as, meanwhile, Eddie continues applying his sunscreen with meticulous focus, short fingers smoothing it over his throat, leaving a sheen. The muscles of his shoulder, the tendons of his neck flex in the sun, making Richie long for the dark of a hotel room, where he could smooth palms over them, where he could suck bruises into them—

“Are you guys planning to do the mud?”

Richie tries not to jump, tearing his eyes from the sunlight reflecting off Eddie’s freckled neck. “M-Michael!” he sputters. “Now is not the time to offer us drugs.” At Mike’s quirked eyebrow, he goes on, “Or suggest the latest dance move.”

“...Oh, like... ‘do the mud’...?” Mike asks, head tilted.

Eddie snorts loudly, pointedly applying to the backs of his ears. “Reaching.”

“It’s a special kind of mud they have here,” Huda says. “It’s supposed to be good for your health.”

Eddie’s nose crinkles up. “We’re supposed to eat it?” he asks in distaste before he rucks up the hem of his t-shirt and strips it over his head. He flips it deftly to turn it right-side-out again and drapes it over a plastic chair, his shoulders flexing in the sun as he returns to slathering himself.

Richie’s mouth goes dry as he averts his eyes. What Mike is saying is _very _important, and somehow Mike’s bare, flawless chest is easier to look at than Eddie’s, wiry and pale.

Mike laughs and shakes his head. He points down the beach to two Jordanian teenagers who are posing for a picture, their chests covered in a dark brown goop. “It’s just for your skin, Eddie.”

“Yeah, it’s just for your skin, Eddie,” Richie echoes. Impulsively he darts out a hand to clap him hard on the shoulder. His palm sticks slightly where Eddie’s skin is tacky with sunscreen.

Eddie glares at him. “So… what,” he says to Mike and Huda, clearly unimpressed at the proposition, “I put the mud on and then I… rinse it off? Won’t all my sunblock come off, too?”

“You can always reapply it,” Ben suggests, to Eddie’s deep and apparent skepticism.

“Yes, you’re supposed to wash the mud off in the water,” says Huda.

“Yeah, the salt and the minerals from mud combine, and…”

“Sounds fun!” says Richie, at the same time as Eddie scoffs, “Sounds like bullshit.”

Richie bursts out laughing. Eddie pinches the bridge of his nose.

“You don’t have to do it, Eddie,” Huda says, still chuckling. “The mud can be kind of expensive, depending on how much you get.”

“Oh. Really?” Eddie draws his lower lip between his teeth, eyebrows pinched together. “Well, but I don’t wanna be the only one not doing it…”

Richie is struck again by the memory of Eddie, a white blot on the amphitheater floor. The only one not doing it. He quietly whistles a bar: _The times they are a-changing._

“Don’t worry, I’m not doing it either,” says Mike with a reassuring smile. “Did it with Stan and the host sisters when we were here before, I don’t need to do it again.”

“Oh, really?” Richie asks. “So it’s a single-dose kinda thing, huh? This is some good mud.”

“Well, I’m in!” says Bev, in a tone that proclaims she’s tired of the deliberation. “Let’s get our mud on. C’mon, Ben.” She grabs him by the wrist, and Richie can barely suppress a grin at the way Haystack’s ears immediately go pink as Bev drags him in the direction of the gift shop.

Mike follows, and Huda and Saleh, and Richie turns to go, too. Then he feels a hand at his upper arm, holding him back. He twists around to find Eddie, of course, face shiny from sunscreen and slightly red.

He drops his arm and holds out the bottle to Richie. Eyes flicking away, he mumbles, “Could you get my back?”

Richie’s stomach flips. He’s pretty sure his face twitches before he schools it into some semblance of _chill_. “Sure thing, Spagheds,” he says brightly, taking the bottle. “Now do your little turn on the catwalk, but, like, stop halfway.”

“You could just say ‘turn around’,” Eddie grouses. But he does so, arms crossed petulantly over his slippery chest.

Richie upends the bottle, shakes it, and squirts the milky stuff onto the fingers of his left hand. He’s unable to suppress a giggle. “Hey, Eds, you know what this reminds me of?”

Eddie sighs with his whole body, his freckled shoulders heaving. “I dunno, Richie,” he drawls, long-suffering. _“Come?”_

“Why, Edward! I never!”

An impatient huff. “Well, _what,_ then? What were you going to say, if not come?”

“I was _going _to say mayonnaise,” Richie says, deeply pleased with himself as he sets down the bottle on the nearby table and passes some of the pool of sunscreen across to his right, “which _reminds_ me of come,” and he lands both dripping palms on Eddie’s shoulder blades.

Eddie jumps, his noise of frustration twisting into a yelp at the sudden touch before he relaxes into it. Richie’s hands skate over his shoulders, his back, between his scapulae and down his spine, and the motion feels achingly familiar. It’s the third time he’s had his hands on Eddie like this—warm and kind and in service to him, soothing his anxieties in one way or another. But it’s the first time it’s been in public, and when he feels his dick twitch in his trunks as he drags the heels of his hands over the dimples just above Eddie’s ass, Richie quickly realizes just how dangerous it is to do so.

He grits his teeth and tears his eyes away, forcing them up, to stare into the middle distance beyond Eddie’s fuzzy head.

Someone is watching them.

Richie’s heart leaps to his throat.

It’s one of the men from the changing rooms. Older than them, probably late thirties or just cresting forty. He lounges heavily in a white plastic pool chair, one hand resting over a slightly rounded belly. His eyes are narrowed, wary, through the haze of the argeeleh he’s smoking.

Fear stabs through Richie like a spear. Does this guy _know_? Richie has seen so much casual same-gender touching in his two months here—so many men holding hands, linking arms, and he knows it’s more acceptable than boy–girl touching, but he realizes suddenly that he has no idea what about it signals to other Jordanians, _This is okay_. He knows Amman is one of the better Arab capital cities for same-sex attraction, true, but they’re not in Amman anymore, and Richie doesn’t know how much is too much, has no fucking idea how much is too much—

“A-all done!” Richie announces, pulse leaping. He attempts a grin as he slaps Eddie back hard enough to make him stumble. “Now I gotta see a man about a horse! Er, mud. A mud about some m— Y-you know what I mean, I gotta get nasty. C’mon, Spaghettios, let’s see what the others are up to, _yalla_.”

He grips Eddie by the shoulders and steers him into the gift shop, out of sight of that smoky suspicious scrutiny.

By the time they find the others, Bev has already located the best-priced miracle mud, and she and Ben are debating whether to go in together on a bigger tub. Richie arrives just in time to offer them the services of both his wallet and his surface area, so the three of them walk away from the gift shop counter with a surprisingly heavy vat of Mineral Dead Sea Black Mud Very Smooth Good For Skin.

In minutes, Richie, Ben, and Bev are standing among the patio tables, shucking off shirts and dresses as Eddie scrutinizes the label on the container.

“Detoxifies, no kaolin, no glycerin, no paraben… gently exfoliates the skin and draws out impurities and toxins…”

“Does it say it’ll make me beautiful?” Richie asks, tamping down the hair that went staticky from pulling his shirt over his head. “About how much more beautiful can I expect to become?”

“It does not give a percentage,” Eddie replies dryly.

“That’s fine, I’ll take it in absolute terms.”

“...Seven.”

He scoffs. “Only seven more beautiful? That’s not very much. I thought this mud would turn me into the next Brad Pitt, Saleh.”

“It’s mud; it’s not magic,” Saleh replies, and his tone is apologetic but it still makes Bev and Mike snicker while Eddie…

Well, Eddie Kaspbrak, the little shit, kickstarts the first two stages of his stupid Movie Laugh™.

“Ya hear that, Trashmouth?” he crows.

Richie rolls his eyes in mock annoyance. “Yeah, yeah, I heard it. Real chuckalicious, Saleh. Chuckalectable.”

Saleh flushes lightly in confusion. “I-I didn’t mean it as an…”

Richie waves a hand. “No worries, _habibi_, Eds here is just jealous that he can’t expect his beauty to increase by any amount. Not even seven.”

“Don’t call me Eds,” Eddie grumbles as he sets down the vat of mud.

Ben pries the lid off the plastic tub and the three of them go to town. The mud is surprisingly goopy, not gritty the way Richie imagined, and it’s a kind of charcoal color instead of brown. It almost runs through his fingers when he dips them in.

“Gross,” Bev giggles in delight, watching it sluice over her knuckles.

“It reminds me of something they’d dump on the judges in a Nickelodeon game show,” says Richie.

“Then I guess it’s time to slime ourselves,” Ben says brightly, gathering his own handful of goop with a smile.

Almost as one, they begin to slather it on. It’s cool, a nice contrast to the relatively warm March day. Rubbing it into his skin, Richie can feel the grit, fine like—well, like salt, which he supposes makes sense. He starts with his chest and spreads it up to his neck, his jaw, his cheeks.

“So how is this stuff supposed to work, anyway?” he asks, eyeing the rest of them as he smears.

“You put it on, wait for it to dry, and then wash it off in the Dead Sea,” says Mike, watching them apply with a quirked-up smile.

“Will it cure my acne?”

“It _claims_,” says Eddie, and the obvious, shitty skepticism in his tone makes Richie bite back a grin, “that it removes toxins, exfoliates, and clears skin.”

“Woulda been nice to know before the ’rents spent all that dough on Accutane.”

Eddie freezes, eyes wide. “Richie. You took _Accutane_?”

“Eeyup,” he says, delicately applying to his upper lip, where he gets ingrown hairs and, therefore, pimples. “And I didn’t get pregnant even _once_.”

“High-five,” says Bev, raising a goopy hand.

“Richie, you know that stuff is _really _dangerous, right? You could have liver problems, or stomach problems, or— or bowel problems, or—”

“Eds, relax. I got ninety-nine problems, but none of them are liver-, stomach-, or bowel-related.”

“They could present later in life!”

“Then that sounds like an issue for future Richie.” He grins, but Eddie’s look of frustrated horror barely dissipates. His eyes fly over Richie’s body, like he could diagnose him standing there. It’s not a sexy way of looking at him, by any means, but it still has Richie’s skin baking.

As a distraction, he reaches for the tub again. “Come on, Spaghetti. Time to kick back with some mud.” He scoops a big hunk of it and slaps it directly onto Eddie’s left pec.

“Hey!” Eddie exclaims, leaping backwards. He looks at the glob in disgust as it detaches from his skin and slops to the ground. “What the fuck!”

“_You _what the fuck. That shit is expensive!” Richie bends down to scrape it off the ground and apply it to his own arm.

“That was on the _ground_.”

“Eds, it’s mud. It _is _the ground.”

“Are you losers done yet?” Bev’s voice rings between them, snapping their heads around to look at the others. Smiling, Bev has her muddy hands on her muddy hips, covered neck to toe but for the fabric of her bikini in gray-brown sludge. “Wow, look at you. Almost not even a little bit ready. At this rate, Ben and I will be done drying by the time you’ve put all of it on!”

“Maybe I could work faster if Eddie would stop distracting me,” Richie complains, earning a bird from Eddie.

“Sooo, you actually _can’t_ work any faster,” says Bev with a devious smile. It earns snickers from the rest of them; even Huda hides a smile in a well-manicured hand. Richie sticks a tongue out at Bev and sputters when it comes into contact with the mud below his lip.

Richie finishes applying his mud a few minutes later, and then the task is to stand still and let it dry. The kind of task Richie _despises_. He can’t even sit down because he applied it to the backs of his thighs like an idiot and he doesn’t want to get it all over the seat so he just had to stand there while Bev and Ben—two assholes who are apparently capable for foresight or restraint or whatever—laze in the pool chairs and Mike, the mudless bastard, even takes a dip in the clean, frigid pool. He comes out almost immediately, shivering and covered in goosebumps, but Richie can’t even cross his arms, so who’s the real chump.

Eddie, however, remains beside him, arms crossed over his bare chest. Standing barefoot beside each other makes Richie strangely aware of their difference in height, how the top of Eddie’s fuzzy head comes up to his jaw and how easy it would be to drape an arm over his shoulders, haul him in for a hug just to press their skin together.

Well, maybe if his skin weren’t covered in mud.

“You look like a scarecrow,” Eddie tells him with wry amusement, breaking the quiet.

“Well, I do have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto,” Richie quips in return.

Eddie snorts, and then goes quiet. They stand together in silence for a moment. The dull rumble of the Dead Sea sounds nearby.

“You know, I was understudy for the Scarecrow in a production,” Richie says, antsy just to run his mouth. “It was a limited run, and the main guy never got sick or anything so I didn’t actually get to perform the role, but I still…” He drops. Drags down the side of his mouth ruefully. “...That’s not cool. Never mind, forget I said that.”

Eddie shrugs. “I think it’s cool.”

Richie looks over at him so fast he’s pretty sure some of the mud on his neck cracks. “Really?”

“Really really.”

“…_‘An jad_?”

Eddie’s mouth quirks up. “_‘An jad ‘an jad._”

He looks away again, and Richie is deeply grateful for the dark mud covering the flush creeping into his cheeks.

“Yeah, I’m no good at that stuff,” Eddie goes on. His voice is light, his arms crossed over his chest just below the dark smudge of mud on his pec. “I did some school plays when I was too little to say no. You know, the ones the whole school has to do so the parents can bring their camcorders?”

Richie nods dumbly. He tries to imagine a littler Eddie. Perfectly parted hair, a spray of freckles over a snub nose. He wants to see pictures.

“I played a tree, I think,” he says. “Maybe a mailbox, once? Anyway, I remember this one time we were doing a puppet show, and I wanted to be the cow. I don’t know why, I just really wanted to be this fucking cow. But this girl also wanted to be the cow, so we both had to do our best cow impressions. And I went first, so I think of the most accurate cow noise I can muster and I go—” Eddie takes a deep breath and lets out a guttural, “_Muuuuhhhhh_.”

Richie snickers—thinks about it again—and then sputters out a laugh so hard he’s spattering half-dried mud onto the concrete. “What the hell, dude! That’s way too accurate!”

Eddie’s giggling, too. “I know!”

“That’s a real-ass cow noise! This is an elementary-school puppet show, kid!”

“I really wanted the part!”

“I get it, you were going Method with it,” Richie laughs. “You were like, ‘I will shit in an open field for weeks to prepare for this role. I will eat hay and piss milk to prepare for this role!’”

The muscles in Eddie’s sides are jumping, flexing with the effort to hold in his laughter. “I _know_! But that’s not the best part,” he says, quickly hushing Richie with a wave of his hand. (Only a few more giggles escape before he gets a hold on himself.) “The best part is, they were like, ‘Okay, Jenna, now you do your best, uhh… fuckin’… cow noise.’”

“And they said it exactly like that.”

“And she goes…” Eddie makes his face and voice go totally deadpan. “She goes, ‘Uh… moo?’”

Richie stares for one second—and then convulses with laughter. “Uh, moo?” he echoes, giggling.

“Just like that! ‘Uh… moo? Moo?’”

Richie is dying, reeling backwards. “Moo!”

_“And she got the part!”_

The noise that barks out of Richie’s throat is close to a bray, and he’s not ashamed. “Of course she did, dude! It was a puppet show! You went _way _too hard right out the gate!”

“Yeah, well,” Eddie says, crossing his arms and barely hiding a smile. “I decided then and there that no one would ever appreciate my art, and so no one deserved it.”

“Well, don’t hide your light under a bushel, Eds. I think you have a promising future in barnyard impressions.”

Eddie chuckles. “I’ve never told anyone that story, actually. It’s kind of embarrassing.”

“No, it isn’t,” Richie exclaims, unable to help himself. “You went hard. You gave it your all. You did a better cow impression than that girl Jenna, like, objectively. You were just… unappreciated in your time.”

“Like Van Gogh.”

Richie laughs. “Exactly like Van Gogh. Speaking of which…” He dabs at the now-fully-dried mud beneath his ear, then his neck, his pec, his thigh. “Stick a fork in me, I think I’m done.”

“That’s from _Friends_,” Eddie observes.

Richie lifts his eyebrows, raises his mud-cracking arms in a field goal position. “He can be taught!”

The mud on Ben and Bev dried long ago, as well, so the five of them make their way down to the shoreline. The thin waves lick along the beach, retreating mere feet before rolling forward again. The sound is dull, not the overwhelming roar of the Pacific that Richie is used to. As he steps forward toward the waves, the ground beneath his bare feet turns hard and uneven. It’s white, streaky, looking like calcified stone frozen into waves and foam itself.

Ben’s voice is just as curious beside him. “Congealed salt?”

“Bizarre, right?” Mike says.

“It’s kinda ugly,” Richie pipes up. “Can I say that? It’s ugly.”

“Looks more like a lake than a sea, really,” says Bev.

“This is the weirdest fucking lake I’ve ever seen,” Eddie grumbles, crossing his arms. “What even makes something a sea, anyway?”

“How cool the name sounds,” Richie says, before Ben can attempt to educate them further. “Dead Sea is way more badass than Dead Lake.”

“Then why wouldn’t they just call it Dead Ocean?” Eddie asks, narrowing his eyes at Richie. “If it’s all in how cool it sounds?”

“Well, now you’re just being ridiculous.”

The five of them edge closer, so the waves lap at their toes. It’s oddly tepid; it feels like stepping into bathwater.

Mike strides ahead of them, into his shins, Ben and Bev following. Eddie is clearly hesitating behind the others, gnawing on his lower lip when Richie glances over at him.

Richie sidles closer, lets himself grip Eddie’s shoulder and lean in, whispering, “Imagine what strange creatures lurk in those depths.”

“Shut up, Richie,” Eddie mumbles.

“Apparently the Dead Sea is too salty for anything to live in, actually,” Mike calls.

Richie leans even closer, whispers even rougher, “Imagine what strange _dead _creatures lurk in those depths…”

Eddie slaps his hand away, eyes flashing, and Richie falls back, laughing. Eddie whirls around and stomps into the sea, Richie on his tail.

Right away, the water is… weird. Warm and almost slimy. When it laps at Richie’s shins, he feels it leave behind an odd residue, a film sitting on his skin where the mud is beginning to slough away. He turns his head and catches sight of Eddie’s face, contorted in revulsion as he wades in beside him.

“Ew, what the fuck,” Eddie says, grimacing down at the water.

“I know,” laughs Mike.

“Seriously, what the fuck.”

“I know!”

Eddie’s shoulders are hiked up, his hands tucked nearly into his armpits as he dutifully trails the rest of them into the sea. “It’s like… like soap scum or something, what the _fuck_, though…”

Richie can’t help but laugh, pausing with the water halfway up his thighs, beginning to balloon his trunks. He turns back and holds an arm out to a scowling Eddie. “C’mon, man,” he chuckles.

Eddie glares at him. “This _sucks_.”

“Yeah, it does, kind of,” Richie concedes, hand still hovering. “But I don’t think the point is for it to be, like, relaxing or refreshing or—”

“—or _nice_? Like, _at all_?”

“I think the point is to have an experience.”

“A sucky experience,” Eddie mumbles, but he takes another step forward far enough to slap Richie’s hand down.

“Well, your attitude is certainly making it better,” Richie teases, grinning when Eddie scowls even more deeply at him. “There he is. Mr. Congeniality.”

Eddie flips him off.

From behind him, Richie hears a little _whoop!_, a half-shriek, and a splash. He whirls around to find Mike smiling over at Ben and Bev, who, by the looks on their faces, have just decided to finally test out floating.

“Holy shit!” Bev exclaims, her expression openly shocked. She paddles her hands lightly on the surface of the water and lets out another little yelp as she rights herself. “Holy _shit_!”

“Right?” Mike chuckles.

“It’s like sitting on a chair or something,” says Ben, a little awed. He’s looking around himself, as though the secret will be revealed to him, invisible strings holding him up rather than the simple buoyancy of the salt.

“Or a hammock.”

“Yeah!”

The water is rippling around Richie’s belly button now, pulling gently at him as he wades forward. He pouts. “You guys,” he whines, “I thought we were gonna do it on the count of three…”

“Well, you were tending to Oscar the Grouch,” Bev shoots back, grinning. “Who knew how long that was gonna take.”

Eddie flips her off, too. Gleefully, she does it right back.

“Sorry, Richie,” Ben says sincerely.

“Besides, Mike already knows what it’s like,” Bev goes on. “It’s not like it’s new for everyone.”

“You and Eddie can still count to three,” Mike suggests.

Richie turns with a smile. “Whaddaya say, Eds? Count of three?”

Eddie’s mouth twists. He still hasn’t let his arms down to even get his hands wet, his distaste for the entire endeavor clear as day. “Do I have to?”

“You wanna get that mud off, don’t you?”

“I wouldn’t need to get the mud off if you hadn’t slapped me with it!”

“All part of the plan. Are you ready for your left titty—”

“Ew, god, ‘titty’ is worse than ‘tit,’ Richie, _please_—”

“—to be at least seven more beautiful than the right… teat?”

“_Eugh!”_

“I know, you really shoulda had both done.”

“Fine, fine, let’s just get this fucking over with, one, two—”

On _three_, which comes fast enough that Richie is nearly too busy trying to come up with another word for “breast” to clock it, both of them turn their asses to the meager waves and fall backwards, a trust fall with the slimy-salty sea, Richie only a split-second behind Eddie so they land _one-two, splish-splash_.

“Holy tidbits, Batman!” Richie hoots. “Holy buoyant thingamajugs!”

“Ugh, you’re ruining it.”

“Who could ruin this? This is… weird as fuck!”

And so it is. Once Richie settles, his shins and shoulders sticking out of the tepid sea, he realizes just how strange a body of water it is. It buoys him, keeps him afloat; it’s like a built-in floatie. No wonder Huda and Saleh said you would have to _want _to drown in this.

“There should be a mystery novel about the Dead Sea,” says Mike, paddling slowly over to Richie and Eddie. He’s still floating leisurely on his back, piddling his feet and hands until he gets close to them. “Wouldn’t it be such a good twist? A body is found, perhaps trying to swim across to the Israeli side. It’s ruled an accidental death until someone notes that it would be nearly impossible to drown in the Dead Sea.”

“That’s incredibly macabre, Mikey,” says Richie.

“And the body has barely decomposed because of the salt content of the water,” adds Eddie.

“Ooh, great point!” Mike exclaims eagerly, swirling near them.

Richie looks over at Eddie, bemused. “Uh… moo?”

Eddie frowns at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you’re putting way too much thought into this for the context,” Richie replies, laughing. “Now I’m gonna get this mud off. Here we go…!” He sucks in a breath, screws his eyes up tight, and dunks his face under the water, scrubbing hard at the caked-on mud. When his fingers feel clean again, he surfaces, face upturned to the drying sun, keeping his eyes closed for the moment so that no salt will drip into them.

That’s when he feels the burning.

“Oh, fuck,” he bites out, hand going to his chin and neck.

Eddie, the first to notice: “You okay?”

Ben, father away, even more concerned: “What is it?”

“Fuck. Fuckfuck_fuck_—”

Eddie, riding the edge of amusement: “Did you get it in your eyes?”

“No,” Richie grits out. The skin on his throat and lower face is seriously on fire. “God, _fuck_…”

“Then what?”

“Richie.” Mike’s voice, serious but with a tinge of amusement. “You didn’t _shave_ this morning, did you?”

Richie freezes, allows his eyes to squint open. Everyone is staring at him in varying places on the spectrum from amusement to outright horror. “I shave every morning, Mikey, I’m practically a wolfman.”

And everyone sucks in a breath of sharp, horrified pity.

“What? _What?_”

“You’re an idiot,” Eddie says bluntly.

“_What!?_”

“The salt, Richie! Of course it’s gonna sting your pores!”

“How was I supposed to know!?”

“You didn’t have to put mud on your _face_!”

“You big disgrace,” Bev adds wryly.

“Nice.” Richie shoots her a finger gun before wincing again, putting a hand to his fiery cheek. “God, _fuck _this hurts. You don’t even _know_…”

“And whose fault is that.” Eddie’s voice has absolutely no pity left in it, only deep amusement.

_“Yours.”_

Eddie sputters. “How is it _my _fault?”

“Because!”

_Because I wanted to look good for you so you’d want to fuck me again! _“Because… blah blah blah your mom!”

“Seriously?”

“That’s the best I can do right now, my face is literally on fire and no one _cares_!”

“Richie,” Mike laughs, “why did you shave? You knew we were coming to the saltiest body of water on planet Earth.”

“Yeah, _akhi_, why do you think my legs look like a redwood forest? Even though I’m in a bathing suit?”

“I thought you were making a statement,” Richie whines, pouting so hard he knows it’s not even a little bit cute. “I thought you were being, like, a powerful woman.”

“I can be a powerful woman with shaved legs.”

Richie is practically sobbing, clenching his eyes shut again as another wave of burning pain overtakes his face. “That’s not what I _meannttt_…”

“Jesus Christ, you are so dramatic,” Eddie mutters, and then fingers are encircling his wrist and tugging him in the direction of the shore. “C’mon, let’s go to the showers. We can wash off the salt and the rest of the mud.”

“You’re only doing this because you hate the Dead Sea so much,” Richie ventures, allowing Eddie to pull him, letting the tiny waves push him forward every few slogging steps. “I hope you know it’s biblical, you heathen.”

“Right. _I’m _the heathen, Mr. Blowjob,” Eddie scoffs under his breath.

Richie just grins, focusing on how Eddie’s fingers are still loose around his wrist.

They stumble out of the waves, the soles of Richie’s feet scraping along the congealed salt on the shore and through the tacky wet sand until they reach the overhead showers. There are three showerheads arranged in a semicircle, and Eddie sticks Richie under the center one before going to stand under one himself and kicking the pushbutton start. Richie does the same and a cascade of frigid water rains down on him.

To his immense relief, it does seem to wash away the last of the salt clinging to his pores. The pain in his face had subsided to a dull ache by the time Eddie plopped him under the spigot, but it washes away completely under the fresh water, not to mention the remnants of the mud and the sliminess of the Dead Sea itself. He turns with a smile to mention as much to Eddie, only to see that Eddie is already watching him quietly, eyes roving over Richie’s bare chest as his hands run absentmindedly over his own skin. It lights a fire in Richie’s veins.

Richie grins, amused. “Like what you see?”

“Shut up.” Eddie looks away, closing his eyes as he turns his face into the spray.

He laughs, pleased, but somehow can’t bring himself to look away from Eddie, now that he knows that openly checking each other out is on the table.

They are still in public so he has to be sneaky about it, but in between scrubbing his own face, knees, and armpits to ensure that all of the residual mud is gone, he steals as many glances as he can. Eddie’s hair is so short these days that it barely looks different soaked with the water from the shower, but his shoulders and chest certainly more than make up for it, with rivulets running down his arms and the creases between his pecs. His skin is reddish-pink in blotches where he’s scrubbed away the salt and abrasive mud.

And there, right by his left nipple, is a constellation of three darker, irregular nickel-sized marks that have Richie’s entire body flushing.

Did he leave _marks_? Marks that have taken more than a week to completely disappear? He can’t remember being that rough, _allowing _himself to be that rough. But as Eddie stands under the spray and lets the water run down his body, Richie can’t deny that those are definitely hickeys. Ovular, yellowing hickeys.

Jesus Christ, Tozier, get a grip.

“Like what you see?”

His eyes dart up. Eddie is smirking back at him, clearly having caught Richie at his own game.

“Yep,” Richie replies easily, a little too lightly, perhaps, but whatever. He gestures vaguely to his own chest, unable to meet Eddie’s eyes. “Admiring my handiwork.”

“Your—? Oh.” Eddie’s tone is shy; in his periphery, Richie can see him looking down and away. He thinks he might even be chewing on his bottom lip. “Yeah, most of them faded already, but…”

“_Most _of them!?”

It’s out of his mouth before Richie can stop himself. His stomach swoops. Fucking hell, Eddie must have looked like he got mauled. Did he have to hide from Ben whenever he changed his shirt!?

Eddie, fortunately, seems to find it funny. He chuckles lightly as he turns off the water. “Yeah,” he says quietly, quietly enough that Richie has to look over to be sure he’s hearing him right. He half-smiles, his eyes cutting away a little bashfully. “You, uh, certainly made it a hard night to forget.”

And suddenly Richie’s face is burning in a whole other way. He fumbles at the tap, managing to turn it off, staring at how the water is coming together in droplets clinging to Eddie’s fingers and elbows and winging shoulder blades as Eddie turns to look around them. Eddie’s brow furrows into a storm cloud as he scowls.

“Aw, fuck, we left our towels by the pool, didn’t we?”

***

The sun sinks below Israel in the west as the five of them laze around the pool. Richie and Bev order a hookah, share it with Ben and an unusually indulgent Saleh. Eddie sits low in his chair, his towel draped over his thighs. A tawny cat passes through their group, and Eddie wiggles his fingers at it until it leaps into his lap and curls up there. Richie watches as Eddie scratches its cheek quietly, his chin resting in his other hand.

The dipping sunlight casts Eddie’s face in an orange light, his nose and cheekbones shadowing the other half in purple. When his eyes flick up and meet Richie’s, they’re glowing golden and topaz. Richie’s breath catches in his chest, his heart thudding in time with the dull lap of the waves against the salt shore. He thinks,

_Two days ’til spring break._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes, the dead sea really is that fucking weird. i give it a 6/10.
> 
> thanks as always to [@jajs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jajs/pseuds/jajs) for the beta read!
> 
> i’m [@tempestbreak_](https://twitter.com/tempestbreak_) on twitter.
> 
> arabic glossary:  
_akhi_: my brother  
_’an jad_: really  
_habibi_: my dear  
_infijar_: explosion  
_qunbulah_: bomb  
_yalla_: hurry; let’s go


	19. march v: there’s nowhere else in the world i’d rather be / than here with you, it’s perfect

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from "mint car" by the cure

Beirut is heaven.

Their flight leaves dusty Amman early in the morning, by design. They figured they might as well spend as much time in Beirut as possible, and Richie is already calling it one of the best decisions he’s ever made. Their check-in time for the hostel isn’t until later, but their taxi drops them off in a city center, a roundabout where there stands a tall, stone clock tower flanked by lush, verdant trees. The blue spires of an enormous mosque peeking over the buildings behind it. They wander past a fountain, a _fountain_—Richie hasn’t seen a decorative water feature in _months_, he’s almost agog at it. Eddie makes an _Anchorman_ reference when he sees a window perfume display with a panther statue in it, and Richie cackles. A few stores down, Richie insists that Eddie take his picture with a sign in a clothing store that says, “Putting Out on the First Date is Hot.”

“Premarital sex, Eds!” he exclaims pointing.

“I get it.”

“They’re acknowledging it! Positively!”

“I get it!”

Richie poses with two big thumbs up, his mouth wide open in surprised glee. When he looks at the picture on the camera’s screen, he says, “Wow. A serious contender for a new profile pic within the first hour of landing. Can you believe it?”

“I can believe that no company will ever hire you,” Eddie grumbles back.

Truly, Beirut is a different beast from Amman.

Their hostel is a short cab ride away in the northwest peninsula of the city, a neighborhood called al-Hamra. When the driver finds out they’re visiting from Jordan, he makes sure to take them there via the coastal route. The Mediterranean sparkles at them, vast and azure. Richie has to fight the urge to hang his head out the window like a dog and suck in the clean salt air. He settles for rolling his window down and closing his eyes against the whipping breeze.

By the time they arrive at the hostel, Richie’s hair is a rat’s nest, and Eddie’s cheeks are bitten red by the wind. They fall out of the cab exhilarated, and Richie almost forgets to be nervous about this next part.

Being alone in the room with Eddie.

_Almost_.

Richie closes the door behind him, and the click of the latch catching echoes in the room and his ears. The room is big, with two twin beds thrust against opposite walls and an awkward amount of empty space in between, where Eddie has deposited his backpack. Richie throws his down next to Eddie’s and joins Eddie peering into the bathroom. 

It’s more like a shower room, with a toilet and a sink and a drain in the floor. The idea that Eddie will absolutely hate it flashes through his brain, suddenly strong.

“Well,” Richie says, and Eddie turns to him. “_Ahlan wa sahlan_, I guess.”

Eddie gives him an unreadable look and turns away to kneel by his backpack. “Which bed do you want?” he asks.

“Whichever one you’re in.”

He means it as a flirty joke (or, if Eddie receives it positively, not a joke at all), but immediately he regrets it when he sees Eddie freeze. 

“I mean, because it’ll be warm!” he says, his stomach sinking. “Not for like… you know, putting-out-on-the-first-date reasons.” 

Despite a small quirk at the corner, Eddie’s lip ends up between his teeth again.

“Although according to Beirut,” Richie plows on, “that _is _hot, and _when in Beirut_...” He gives what he hopes is a winning smile.

The silence stretches taut. Richie’s gut begins to curdle and froth under his skin.

Did something change? Does Eddie— does Eddie not want to… anymore? Is that why he’s being so stiff? Should… should Richie ask? Only he doesn’t want to pressure him—

Eddie’s quiet voice cuts through the spiral of fog. “Don’t you think it would be suspicious if one of the beds wasn’t slept in?”

“Oh.”

Richie’s a little embarrassed to admit he didn’t think of that. Not to mention Eddie is chewing up that lip again, meaning he’s either nervous or thinking _very _hard about something. Richie feels that neither of those options bodes particularly well for him in this scenario.

“Well, maybe we can just muss up the covers or something, throw the pillows on the floor,” he offers. “A-and I mean, I was just joking, Eds. Really, we don’t have to sleep in the same…”

He trails off. The words suddenly sound horrifically intimate between his teeth. He clamps down on them, on the sour twist of longing in his throat. Eddie is still chewing his lip, fishing his phone out of his pocket to fiddle with it. They were so excited by the newness, the fresh, airy bite of Beirut that neither of them had even looked at their phones except for the time.

“_Anyway_,” he says lightly, moving to the bed farther from Eddie and throwing himself down on it. “Feels good to drop off the stuff, huh? You have anything in mind for the rest of the day?”

If possible, Eddie goes even stiller, chews even _harder _at his lip.

“...N-no,” he says eventually. “Not really...”

“Winging it, I like it!” Richie says, all blind enthusiasm. He kicks his legs, hanging over the side of the bed, and tries to distract himself staring at the white ceiling. “We can look at the map in Stan’s Lonely Planet guide. We’re pretty centrally located here, maybe there’s something nearby? I think AUB might be in walking distance, or maybe the— the thing that’s by the beach? The, like— fuck, not a boardwalk but—?”

“...The corniche?”

“Yeah, that! I think we can get there from here. Whatever, the world’s our oyster. Ooh, maybe we could get oysters!”

“Gross.”

“Your mom’s gross.”

Eddie scoffs derisively but as Richie eyes him, he stops biting his lip, his posture softening. He grabs for his backpack and begins digging through it, muttering, “Thought you wanted to keep this cheap, dumbass. How the fuck are oysters supposed to do that?”

“You’re right. They would cut into our alcohol budget.”

“Then no fucking way.”

Richie laughs and then _oof_s as Stanley’s Lonely Planet guide catches him in the stomach. Eddie crosses the room and plops down onto the bed beside him.

“Well?” he asks, one eyebrow raised. “Where are we going?”

***

Their first stop is AUB—the American University of Beirut. The main gate to the campus is a few short blocks downhill, past dozens of restaurants, boutiques, salons. The sides of the buildings that line the sidewalk are plastered with posters advertising movies and concerts—Richie makes Eddie take his picture with one of David Guetta for his tour named _F*** Me I’m Famous _because Richie can’t stop giggling at it.

“_Fuck_, that’s funny,” he hoots, taking his camera back from Eddie.

With a wry grin, Eddie retorts, “I think you mean, ‘F-asterisk-asterisk-asterisk, that’s funny’.”

The street that runs along the outer walls of AUB is called _Bliss_, which Richie finds appropriate because that’s how he feels right now. The air is warming around them as the sun climbs above the hills, the sky clear and blue, and the salt of the Mediterranean breathes fresh in their lungs.

Eddie turns his head into the wind and seems to catch the scent of something, his eyes darting to find the source. Richie does the same, sniffing a few times before he catches it, too: garlic, lemon, cumin, allspice… 

Richie’s empty stomach nearly roars. 

But Eddie is moving even before Richie, taking off down the narrow sidewalk, dodging Beirutis and other tourists in hot pursuit. He tosses a glance over his shoulder once to check that Richie is following, and his grin catching the sunlight makes Richie’s chest burn.

They find the source of the scent soon enough. It’s a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant with two spinning cylinders of shawarma meat—one chicken, the other either lamb or beef. A menu is taped to the wall above several self-serve juice and coffee machines. 

The sight of the cramped restaurant clearly gives Eddie some pause, and Richie figures he knows why. There’s barely a door to the place, just the open air of Bliss Street wafting in, and clean though the air may feel to their dusty Amman lungs, he can’t help but feel like a lotta thoughts are going through Eddie’s brain right now.

But Eddie is not Richie. And Richie’s stomach is fucking eating itself. 

“Oh, _hell _yeah,” he practically slobbers, pushing past Eddie toward the back of the shop, where a burly, hirsute man is sitting behind a small counter. “_Ahlan_.”

“Welcome,” the man replies readily in English.

“_’Addeish ash-shawarma, yaa habibi_?”

“Fifteen hundred,” the man says.

Richie grits his teeth to Eddie. “Fuck, how much is that again?”

“Like, one JD, I think.”

“I will never get tired of these prices, I swear,” Richie sighs lovingly, fishing his wallet out of his pocket.

Richie orders one of each type of shawarma, as well as two of the slushy coffee drinks, chatting easily with the man behind the counter while Eddie idly peruses the menu. The guy sticks to English, which strikes Richie as a little odd, considering he’s carrying on his side of the conversation in Arabic just fine. Is his Arabic so bad that the guy’s trying to make it easier on him or something? He doesn’t _think _it is. Jordanians seem delighted when he chats with them in _‘ammiya_.

But whatever, they’re here. They’re here, and Eddie is not biting his lip like he was in the room, and when Richie turns to him, two sandwiches in hand, and asks, “Chicken or beef?” Eddie actually looks relieved and grateful and… and _touched_ that Richie got one for him, and takes the chicken shawarma with warm fingers that brush Richie’s knuckles.

They decide to find a place to eat on the AUB grounds. The main gate is enormous and deep, almost castle-like with its ramparts and ornate, black iron doors propped open to allow foot traffic. Just inside the gate, stone steps lead down to a courtyard and a walking path that disappears into trees in either direction.

They sit on the steps to eat, and after a brief exclamatory exchange—”Holy shit, this is delicious!” “Seriously.”—they simply watch people pass them by in easy, companionable silence.

Their breakfast finished, they decide to explore the campus. They don’t bother pulling out the map; it stays sticking out of Eddie’s back pocket as they stroll through the verdant campus, wandering closer and closer to the sea. The university grounds are built on the steep cliffs overlooking the Mediterranean, and as they follow the steps down and down and down, the sea rises glittering before them.

They pause in a small garden, lined with sculptures, because amid the pedestals and concrete viewing benches are—

“What the fuck, there’s, like, twenty cats here,” Eddie exclaims.

The cats lounge on all surfaces in the sun-dappled garden. Gingers, calicos, tabbies. One white-and-grey cat with a snip out of its ear approaches them immediately and begins affectionately curling itself around Richie’s leg.

“Ew, don’t touch it,” Eddie says, when Richie bends down a hand for the cat to headbutt.

“Chill, Eds, these are clearly scholarly cats.” Smiling, Richie gives the guy a scritch under his chin, and the cat closes its green eyes in delight. Its fur is a little dusty, he supposes, but nothing like the near-feral cats he’s seen climbing out of dumpsters near his host family’s house. “They’re just appreciating the art.”

“Whatever,” Eddie grumbles, but he pulls up Richie’s camera, which he’s had looped around his wrist by the strap, to take some pictures of a sleepy ginger lounging under an abstract sculpture.

The white-and-grey cat follows on Richie’s heels as he moves slowly through the garden, rubbing itself on the hem of his jeans until Richie squats down to give it more focused attention. Bent down, he can hear the motorcycle engine that is the cat’s purr, louder than the trickling street noise.

“I think this guy really likes me,” Richie says, amused.

“Congratulations, I hope that’s a comfort to you when you’re getting a giant rabies shot directly into your stomach.”

“Pretty sure they don’t do that anymore. Plus, these cats are clearly cared for. See all the snips out of their ears? I think that means they’ve been neutered or whatever.”

“Cat doesn’t need its testicles to bite you.”

Richie laughs. The cat is leaning nearly its entire weight into his palm now, purring up a storm. “You don’t think it takes balls to bite something ten times your size? Well, guess you wouldn’t.”

“The hell is that supposed to m— ah, _fuck_!”

Richie bursts into loud guffaws as Eddie curses and jumps away from the tabby cat perched on the pedestal near him, who has just reached with a paw to tap him on the shoulder for attention. The cat rubs its cheek on the statue enticingly while Eddie glares between it and Richie, a hand clutched to his chest.

They linger in the cat garden for a long while. Eddie, despite his reluctance to touch the animals with his bare hands, seems charmed by how they begin to swarm Richie. “Smile, doofus,” he calls, and when Richie looks up from the three cats head-bonking his knees and hands, Eddie’s pointing the camera his way. “All right, now do the same thing but try to keep your fucking eyes open this time.”

Eventually, the cats have gotten their fill of human affection, so Richie stands back up, wiping his hands off on his jeans. Eddie has determined their next destination should be the corniche. They continue their meandering path downhill toward the sea, until they reach another gate at the bottom of the hill that leads to the road and, across that, the wide seaside promenade known as Corniche Beirut.

The sea rolls upon the rocks below them. Tourists and Beirutis alike stroll along the corniche in both directions, palm trees and street lamps set into the concrete at even intervals. Apart from the hotels and apartment buildings to their left and the road before them, all that dominates the vista are the sky and sea, blue on white-capped blue.

They walk for longer than either of them seems to plan to, simply enjoying the novelty of the environment after so long in landlocked Amman. Richie hadn’t realized until today just how adrift he felt without a body of water nearby to anchor him—ironic, perhaps, but he somehow finds it easier to _think _when he knows which direction the ocean’s in. Not that he needs to feel the salt on his skin, or be at one with the waves or anything like that; it’s simply the immutability of it. At home, he knows _north _and _south _by where the ocean is. It’s nice to feel rooted again.

At length, they seem to come to the realization that they’re looking for lunch. They’ve rounded the northwest tip of Beirut by now, walking south rather than west, and find a restaurant overlooking the ocean that seems like it will be perfect. Richie orders a beer with his meal, and Eddie quickly follows suit because, hey, they’re on vacation.

“To spring break in Lebanon,” Richie says, holding out his bottle. “Everyone’s favorite party destination.”

“Not even a joke,” Eddie agrees with a laugh, clinking his against Richie’s

They chat while they eat, the Lonely Planet guide open in front of them. They came into this trip with arms wide open—as Richie has sung in the overwrought Creed voice multiple times already—ready to face whatever Lebanon holds for them but with no particular goals. What with their many hours of class every day and the growing psychic fatigue of having to continue to socialize in a foreign language at home, the idea of having no real itinerary is as relaxing as it is freeing. All they know is that they want to go to Byblos one of the days, a short trip north by bus—easily decided on the day of.

When they’re done eating and are settled back against the white plastic chairs, gazing over the horizon, Eddie turns his face to Richie with a sly quirk of his eyebrow. “Remind you of Cali?”

Richie knows that’s his cue to groan, so he does, making Eddie smirk. “Do you mean Cali-_for-ni-yay_?”

“I said what I said.”

Richie snorts. “Kind of,” he says with a shrug, turning back to look over the Mediterranean. He squints at it, studying. “But also not really.”

Eddie tilts his head. “How come?”

“I dunno. It’s hard to say.” Richie frowns, shoving his glasses up his nose like that’ll help. “Like, the palm trees, the water, the rocks… even the fact that it’s super hilly, that’s all like home. But… maybe it’s the fact that there’s no beach, that the water just comes right up to the land like that. Or maybe it’s how open everything is, how flat it is right by the sea. My hometown is, like, all hills. Even the Pacific Coast Highway is windy and steep at parts and frankly dangerous as hell but—” He shrugs again, turning back to Eddie with a grin. “Whatever, it’s not important. It’s all _mumtaz _in my book.”

Eddie is listening with the corner of his mouth tugged to the side. The effect is pensive, albeit a little skeptical. “I’m surprised. I figured this would be, like, basically it.”

“I mean, it probably would be if I hadn’t lived there my whole life. Maybe you oughta visit and compare for yourself.”

The suggestion comes out before Richie can stop it, but… he realizes with an easing in his chest that he wouldn’t have wanted to stop it even if he could. They’re both lounging at the tip of Ras Beirut, salt spray clinging to the soft hair of their forearms, a couple beers behind them, and… why not? Eddie’s his friend, no matter what else he is or may or never will be. The day-to-day fears of overwhelming him seem far away here.

Eddie’s golden brown eyes meet Richie’s head on. “You mean that?”

“Yeah. ‘Course.”

Eddie’s eyes slide away again, back to the sea, a smile tugging at his lips.

***

The way back to the hostel is long and uphill, and by the time they reach it, Richie has a damp sheen of sweat at his temple and dark circles under his pits. Eddie, however, seems to still be in high spirits; he even insisted they pop into a liquor store along the way to get more booze.

“It’s just _smart_, Richie,” he said, gesturing with a handle of vodka he’d gotten by the neck. “We’re trying to do this cheap, aren’t we?”

Richie just held up his hands with a disarming grin. “I mean, vodka’s certainly an efficient way to get drunk.”

“Yes, thank you. Now pick out some mixers, Jesus…”

The room looks somehow brighter when they get back, more welcoming, and Eddie plops the handle down right by the closest bed, clinking against the bottles of juice and soda they picked up, too.

He straightens, looking around the room. “Shit, there aren’t any cups.”

“I’ll get some tomorrow,” Richie says, throwing himself on the bed with a sigh of relief. He’s fucking pooped.

“But I wanted to drink tonight.”

“Take a pull, then, Eds. You’re a red-blooded American idiot, aren’tcha?”

Eddie’s face twists. “Of straight vodka? Are you joking?”

“Yeah, you just chase it with some juice or something afterwards. Here, gimme.” 

He holds out his hands, opening and closing his fingers until Eddie shoves the handle and a bottle of mango juice into them. With a groan, Richie rolls onto his side and twists the caps off both. He props himself up against the wall, takes a deep breath, and, well aware Eddie’s eyes are trained on him, takes a swig of the vodka.

It fucking _burns_.

“Guh— oh god,” he sputters. His eyes water as he quickly follows it up with a chug of the juice, his stomach already churning. “Oh, it’s nasty. _Ohh, _it’s nasty…”

“Fuckin’ baby.”

“Fuck.”

“Let me try.”

_“Fuck.” _Richie passes both bottles to Eddie, eyes still clenching as a shudder rips down his spine. “We’re certainly living on a budget, Eds.”

When he cracks an eyelid, though, he’s not surprised to see Eddie’s face is full of steely resolve, staring down at the bottles gripped in either fist. Probably because Richie made it seem so terrible; now Eddie’s gotta prove himself at least better than Richie.

He seems to gather himself. Then he closes his eyes and takes two quick pulls, one after another. He squints back at Richie, his mouth pulled tight. “’Snot that bad,” he grunts.

Richie falls back to the bed, laughing as his legs swing over the side. “Oh, we gettin’ drunk tonight, ain’t we?”

“If you can handle it, fuckface,” Eddie says with a smirk—that familiar one, that _hottest jerk in the world _one—as he joins Richie on the bed and folds a leg under himself. 

Richie watches him upside down, head tilted back against the covers, as Eddie takes yet another swig and chases it. Despite the wince that follows, his motions are already becoming smoother, more confident.

“You look good doing janky-ass shit like this, Kaspbrak,” Richie says with a grin. He tucks an arm under his head. “Never thought I’d see the day.”

“Yeah?” Eddie asks, sticking out his chin defiantly as he looks down at him. “You ready to hook up, then?”

Richie can’t help the way his eyebrows jump. His heart. “I-I was waiting on _you_,” he stammers.

“Yeah right,” Eddie scoffs, capping the bottles again and leaning over to set them on the floor.

“I was! I-I thought you were nervous about it earlier, so I… And you know, we don’t have to do anything at—”

“Oh yes, we fucking do.” And then Eddie is swinging a leg over Richie’s hips so he’s straddling him, looking down at him petulantly. “I didn’t pay for a plane ticket and a hostel for four nights for us to fucking sight-see.”

Richie’s head is reeling. Eddie is sitting on top of him, looking hot and angry, and the bad vodka is already sparking in his veins, and it’s… _a lot_. “O-okay,” he stutters, adjusting his glasses and blinking owlishly up at him.

Eddie frowns. “Is that all you have to fucking say?”

“Sorry, Eds, you’re literally on top of me right now. It’s a little hard to think.”

“Should I get off you?”

“_No_—” His hands fly to Eddie’s thighs to hold him there and, _oh_, they feel very nice in his hands, even through the fabric of his pants. He looks up and sees Eddie is smirking down at him, that same obnoxious smirk, and he must know by now how it makes Richie’s stomach curl and twist hot underneath him. That’s the only reason he must keep doing it.

“Um, no,” Richie says again, attempting dignity. “I do not want you to get off me. But I _would _like you to get me off.” He grins cheekily.

Eddie rolls his eyes. “You are so fucking predictable. Like, they could feed everything you say into, uh, uh— a fuckin’— machine learning algorithm and create a fuckin’ chatbot and no one could tell the difference.”

“God, Eds, I had no idea I was dealing with such a master of dirty talk. Say it again, baby, I’m getting hard just listening to you.” He rolls his hips upwards, and, wow, those beers at lunch must’ve really formed an excellent foundation for this vodka, huh?

Eddie’s face flushes. “Shut up. No you’re not.”

“No, I’m not,” Richie concedes. “But it’s only a matter of time, being near you.”

Wow, a _really _excellent foundation.

But Eddie’s still on his lap, so why the fuck not? Why shouldn’t he say these things? It’s a drunk thought—Richie _knows _it’s a drunk thought—but… 

Eddie squints at him. “You really think I’m that hot.”

“Yes,” Richie responds without hesitation. But why the fuck not?

Eddie blinks at him.

“What? You are. Just stating facts, Eds.”

Eddie looks away and bites his bottom lip, and Richie’s hips twitch up again, this time unbidden. Eddie’s eyes flash back to Richie’s, questioning. “What was that for?”

Richie feels some heat creeping up his neck, feeling a little exposed. “You were biting your lip,” he mumbles. “It’s hot.”

“I do that all the time.”

“Yeah, and you’re hot all the time. I don’t know what to tell you, man.”

Eddie frowns. “What’s hot about me biting my lip? It’s a bad habit.”

Richie laughs at that. “Wellll, seems like a stupid question, but if you’re actually asking…” he says, breaking eye contact to watch his hands slide up and down Eddie’s thighs. The denim feels good, rough against his sweaty, numbing palms. “It makes me look at your mouth, and looking at your mouth makes me think of… well, it makes me think of a lot of things, but especially kissing you, and I like kissing you. I like thinking of specific _ways_ to kiss you. You biting your lip makes me think of biting it myself.” He glances up at Eddie.

He’s gazing down at Richie with those deep brown eyes, pupils widening. He swallows audibly, looking like he very much wants to bite his lip but is suddenly self-conscious about it. He runs his tongue over it instead. “You wouldn’t,” he whispers, and it comes out like a challenge just because that’s his default.

“I would,” Richie whispers back, lifting his chin. “Come down here and try me. _You_ wouldn’t.”

Eddie looks like he wants to resist but he’s helpless against a dare, Richie knows this by now. He places his hands on either side of Richie’s head and begins to lean in. His eyes flicker with uncertainty a moment before they shut.

Richie swallows audibly, just before Eddie’s nose brushes his. It’s not their first kiss, not by a long shot, but it’s the first time they’ve kissed with something like purpose—not in darkness or in stolen moments by the janitorial supplies—and Richie is suddenly, horrifically aware of just how unprepared he is for the taste of Eddie Kaspbrak, full of booze and intention.

He doesn’t have time to prepare, though, before Eddie’s half-torn lips are on his. And they’re— warm. Tentative. Soft. Richie’s eyelids flutter closed at the sensation. He lifts a hand to cup Eddie’s cheekbone, following Eddie’s lead. It’s not uncertain, exactly; they both know what to expect. But there’s a different energy surrounding this kiss. It’s almost questioning. And Richie thinks he knows what the question is.

_Is this as good as I remember?_

Richie moves gently, tongue darting to lick, trail along the seam of Eddie’s mouth, coaxing it open, convincing. Lightly he sucks Eddie’s lower lip, grazes it with his own teeth. Relishes the breath Eddie takes in through his nose, pressed against Richie’s.

Then Eddie pulls back, and Richie forces his eyes to open, against the lethargic heat that’s overtaken them so quickly. Eddie hovers inches from him, face cradled in Richie’s palm, lips parted and breathing softly. His dark eyes give the answer.

_Oh, hell yes._

Then those eyes close, more forcefully this time. Richie hurriedly flings his glasses away and the two of them come together again, and Eddie’s fingers find their way into Richie’s hair, tangling there like they did last time, mere weeks ago. Ages ago.

Then Eddie resettles in Richie’s lap, and his ass lands directly over Richie’s hardening cock, and both of them pause.

“Oh,” Eddie says. “Sorry, I—”

“Eds, it’s fine, no need to apologize,” Richie replies, flashing a breathless smile. “Only if it makes you uncomfortable?”

“Oh. Well.” Color spreads in Eddie’s face. “No, it, uh… it doesn’t. I just thought maybe you, uh…”

Richie tilts his head up at Eddie. Swallows. “Maybe I…?”

“Maybe you… didn’t want me to.”

Richie frowns. “Didn’t want you to _what_?” What could he possibly _not_ want Eddie to do?

Eddie clears his throat. “Touch, uh, it. Basically. Your dick.”

Richie blinks. Then a full-throated hee-haw of a donkey laugh bursts from his chest and right into Eddie’s face.

Instantly, Eddie’s arms cross tight over his chest and he _glares_. “Don’t laugh.”

“Eds!” Richie wheezes. “How the fuck would you get the idea I would ever have a problem with you touching my dick?”

“You locked yourself in the bathroom in the hotel!”

“Yeah, because I a) had your jizz all over my hand and, two, didn’t want to freak you out with my screaming orgasm!”

“A and two,” grumbles Eddie.

“Okay, Stanley.”

“Oh, shut up! What was I supposed to think!? It seemed like you didn’t want me to touch it, so I just thought I’d ask. Sue me!”

“Okay, okay, sorry,” Richie laughs, running his hands placatingly over Eddie’s hips. “You were right. Of _course_ you should assume I don’t want you to touch my dick. It’s the only logical conclusion of me getting rock hard just from kissing you.”

“...Thank you,” Eddie says begrudgingly.

“Now please sit your ass back down on my cock, Eds, and let me _keep _kissing you.”

Eddie glares at him. Then, flushed hard and brows pinched together, he presses his hands to Richie’s chest and slowly, like he’s not sure if he’s allowed, lowers himself until he’s seated in the cradle of Richie’s hips.

When Eddie’s jean-clad ass touches down, Richie lets out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. His fingers spasm where they’re holding Eddie’s hip when he shifts slightly, getting comfortable.

“You really are hard,” Eddie murmurs.

Richie swallows, feeling his own neck heating up. “I rest my case, your honor. Edward Kaspbrak the Third is attractive.”

To his delight, Eddie laughs. He laughs while straddling Richie’s hard dick, with Richie’s palms sweaty on his thighs. He laughs and then leans over again to slot his warm, wet, ever-so-slightly-more-confident mouth against Richie’s.

The feeling is different now. Eddie’s hand lands on Richie’s upper arm and drifts higher, over his shoulder and down his chest, his lips moving more surely now. In return, Richie slides his hands under Eddie’s shirt, a yellow number that highlights the shades of gold in his eyes. He flattens his palms over the planes of Eddie’s back, slowly lifting the fabric bunching at his wrists until Eddie pulls back. Before Richie can even question whether he’s gone too far, Eddie is tugging the shirt over his head and throwing it to the side, returning to Richie’s mouth just as quickly, as though he doesn’t want to be asked about the fact that he’s just blown Richie’s mind. Richie catches a glimpse of pink-stained cheeks a moment before Eddie’s teeth bite into his lip.

Eddie’s skin is smooth, taut beneath Richie’s palms. He drags them lightly over Eddie’s sides, and Eddie shivers, his flesh goosepimpling against Richie’s fingertips as they travel up his chest, ghosting over his nipples.

“O-oh.” Eddie flinches, drawing back.

Richie pauses. “Bad?”

“No. Just weird. No one’s ever…”

“Yeah, girl nipples tend to steal the show,” Richie chuckles quietly. He thumbs hesitantly against Eddie’s, trying to focus on his expression even though their foreheads are nearly pressed together. “I like it, though. Having mine touched.”

Eddie swallows, breath fanning against Richie’s cheekbones. “Y-yeah?”

Richie nods, breathing shallowly. “Uh-huh.”

Slowly, tentatively, Eddie’s palm begins to slide over his shirt. Richie’s heart is racing beneath it, beating hard against his ribs, until Eddie rests his hand just beside where Richie can now feel his nipples are taut, probably poking against the cotton of his Van Halen shirt.

Eddie inhales deeply, and skates the pads of his fingertips over Richie’s left nipple.

“Beep-beep,” Richie blurts out, unable to help himself.

Eddie’s body goes tight over him, then releases with frustrated laughter in response to Richie’s giggles. “What the fuck, dude,” he mutters, shaking his head.

“Sorry, sorry,” he says quickly. “It’s a compulsion, I can’t not—_ohhh_…”

And that was a full-blown moan, because Eddie, vindictive Eddie, took Richie’s nipple between his thumb and forefinger and ever so lightly _twisted_. Richie’s hips buck upwards, unbidden, before the short shock of pleasure dissipates, leaving him blinking and a little hot in the head.

“Fuck,” Eddie breathes, his eyes bright, studying Richie beneath him.

Richie licks his lips. “Fuck indeed.”

Eddie’s mouth falls back to his, seemingly driven to new heights of starving greed at the sounds he’s drawing from Richie’s throat with the fingertips at his nipples. And Richie can’t bring himself to hold back his noises—not that it’s normally a strength of his, anyway—not when Eddie is chasing them so fervently, not when Eddie smiles triumphantly against Richie’s skin whenever he wrenches a particularly throaty groan from Richie’s chest.

Richie lets his own hands wander. They brush Eddie’s nipples, his abs, his sides, and his hips, fingers framing his groin where Richie’s still getting up the nerve to touch. But the booze helps help, as it must help Eddie, delving his tongue into Richie’s mouth as he thumbs at his nipples, and so Richie summons his courage and grazes the front of Eddie’s jeans with a knuckle, and—

And Eddie—

Eddie is hard.

Richie presses his palm against the hard bulge of Eddie’s crotch. Eddie tears away from Richie’s mouth with a gasp that rings in his ears, his face only centimeters away from Richie’s and taking up his gaze with reddened flesh and hooded brown eyes. 

“Y’good?” Richie asks huskily into the whisper of space between them.

“Y-yeah,” Eddie pants, nodding, and then his mouth is back on Richie’s, moving hungrily and breathing hard against his skin.

And Richie still doesn’t know exactly what is on the table, but he figures he’ll be safe if he sticks to what they’ve done before.

Which, lucky him, _does _include touching Eddie’s dick.

Slowly, Richie skates his other hand from Eddie’s hip to his fly. He thumbs at the metal button experimentally at first, just to see if Eddie protests. When all he does is let out a soft grunt against Richie’s lips, he plucks it free from the bunch of denim, grasps the zipper between thumb and forefinger and drags it down, and slides his fingers inside.

“_Nngh_,” Eddie hums as Richie cups his hard, hot cock in his palm through his soft cotton briefs, and _god_, that heat is delicious, the almost humid feel of formerly concealed flesh, and suddenly, desperately, Richie wants to know what color Eddie’s underwear is.

With a heavy breath, he pulls his lips from Eddie’s, tilting his head so he can look down. It’s almost dizzying, seeing his hand wrapped around Eddie’s dick, the flushed, wet head peeking out of his fist. Precome drips down the knuckle of his thumb, easing the slide.

“Black briefs, huh?” Richie chuckles, hooking a pinky into the waistband and letting it snap. “Sexy.”

Eddie glares down at him, but his eyes are glassy and color is high in his cheeks. “They’re practical. Boxers buh— bunch up, _hnn_…”

The choked-off moan sets Richie’s skin on fire, his eyes falling shut as he twists his wrist. “Fuck, the _sounds _you make, Eds, Christ—”

_“Kkh…” _Eddie’s forehead falls to Richie’s shoulder, shaking like it’s taking everything in him not to moan aloud.

Richie presses his mouth behind Eddie’s ear, focusing on the way he responds as Richie’s hand works over him. He glides the undersides of his fingers over the top of the head, squeezing just enough on the downstroke that the motion _drags_. Eddie’s hips are quaking, jerking forward in aborted movements that make Richie think he’s trying to fuck his fist.

And then... _Eddie’s _hand starts moving.

It crawls down Richie’s chest, over his stomach, through the hair below his belly button, to land on the fly of his jeans. Eddie’s breath hitches, right next to his ear, as Eddie yanks at the clasp, and then the zipper, and then Richie is lifting his hips and floundering with his unoccupied hand to help Eddie pull down his pants and boxers and—

Eddie’s hand lands on him softly, so softly he almost wouldn’t feel it except for the fact that, oh yeah, it’s _Eddie_. _Eddie _is the one touching _his dick_, and so Richie feels it like a brand. Fingertips brush over the tip, catching a bead of precome and spreading it hesitantly back down.

“Fuck,” Richie breathes, his temple knocking against Eddie’s. He feels Eddie freeze against him, his hand stilling, and Richie’s heart sinks, just a tad.

Oof. He spooked him.

But that’s fine, Richie decides with an internal shrug. He summons the focus that Eddie ripped to shreds with his tentative touches and begins to move his own hand again, still loosely wrapped around Eddie’s cock.

Within moments, Eddie is back to making those pretty noises in his ear, back to trembling lightly above and around him. His hand moves softly on Richie but without real purpose, and Richie just ignores it, consumed by the desire to make Eddie feel good. If Eddie’s happy where he is, holding onto Richie’s dick like it’s a buoy in the open sea, Richie can work with that. He doesn’t need Eddie to make him come. He’s more than able to take care of both of them. In fact...

“One, _mm, _one sec…”

“W-what.”

“We might not really need this because you are a fucking faucet right now—”

“Fuck off, asshole, so are you,” Eddie grits out, and then Richie feels a hot hand slide around his slick cock.

He moans in surprise, his fingers fumbling on the zipper of his backpack pocket. “I wasn’t making fun of you, man,” he groans, “it’s hot as fuck,” and he groans again, because Eddie doesn’t remove his hand from Richie’s dick but drags his fist down once and back up, almost experimentally.

_Because I’m not looking right now. _The thought floats into Richie’s head. _It’s easier if I don’t look._

Eddie twists his wrist over the head of Richie’s dick. It draws another low sound from deep in Richie’s chest, which Eddie answers with a small hum of satisfaction. Richie wants so badly to turn his head to see Eddie’s face right now, but he throws his other arm over his eyes to stop himself.

“Fuck, Eds,” he moans, still blindly feeling for the bottle of lube. “Your hand feels so good. I’m not gonna last if you keep it up.”

Eddie lets out a noise that sounds like he wanted it to be a derisive snort that twisted up into a strangled sigh instead, and doesn’t stop.

“God, fuck…” Richie chokes out. At last, his fingers close on the bottle, and he pulls it out with dizzy relief. Shifting so he’s directly underneath Eddie again, he pops the lid on the lube and squirts some into his hand. Eddie pauses at the sight, and Richie takes his chance to wrap his hand around his dick, spreading the lube there. As he does, he hears Eddie scoff and glances up at him.

Eddie has one eyebrow raised, watching Richie lube up his cock. “Oh, okay, so I’m supposed to sit here while you just— Oh, fuck—” and his breath hitches as Richie moves his hand to Eddie’s dick, sliding easily up and down, coating it in lube.

“So impatient,” Richie chuckles huskily, propping himself up on his left elbow so his straining, dripping cock brushes against Eddie’s, making them both gasp. Richie wraps his long, slippery fingers around them both and pumps his fist, sliding slickly over their hot flesh, drawing a rumbling noise from deep within his own chest.

Breathing hard, Richie chances a look up into Eddie’s face. His eyes are huge, blown black, almost disbelieving, staring down at Richie’s hand enveloping them both. “Oh, fuck, Richie, _what_—” He cuts himself off with a groan as he falls forward, catching himself with a creak of the mattress springs, nearly ear-to-ear with Richie.

“Mm, yeah, you saying my name is gonna fucking get me there, Eds,” Richie moans in response as he drags his palm over the head of Eddie’s cock, feeling it throb. He turns his face into the crook of Eddie’s shoulder and stamps sloppy, open-mouthed kisses there, listening to Eddie’s ragged breaths, hot on his skin.

“Well, you, _nng_, haven’t said _my_ actual name yet, so I’m still not— _fuck_—”

Richie laughs into Eddie’s neck, and twists his hand up and over their cockheads.

“I’m still— _fuck_—”

“God, you sound good,” he pants, his mouth pressed against Eddie’s warm skin. He smells like sweat from the walk, and faintly like sunscreen. Richie breathes deeply and brings one hand to Eddie’s hip to hold him there, cants his own up to sweeten the pressure. It draws another gasping breath from Eddie’s lips, and when he looks up, Eddie’s eyes are clenched shut tightly.

“You close?” Richie breathes, heat rapidly pooling in his gut.

“Y-yeah.” Eddie’s thighs are beginning to tremble on either side of Richie’s, his dick growing harder in Richie’s hand.

“_Fuck_. Me, too.” Richie flicks his wrist, drawing yet another choked moan from Eddie’s throat. The liquid fire in his core is building quickly, overcoming him so suddenly that it’s almost a surprise when Eddie jerks and comes over Richie’s hand, and then Richie cries out shortly afterwards, unable to stop himself with the feeling of Eddie spasming above him. 

When he has the wherewithal to open his eyes, Richie looks blearily down at himself. Come is pooling in his belly button and slicking down his happy trail. His hand is a fucking mess, but he can feel that without having to look; he lets it rest over his stomach.

With a heavy breath, Eddie pushes up from where he’s perched over Richie and falls to the side. He’s breathing heavy, a flush down his bare chest, cock softening slowly against the crease of his thigh. He looks fucking incredible.

Richie lets his eyelids flutter closed for just a moment, just so he can think. What should he say in this moment? What _can _he say in this moment?

“Want a drink?”

Richie’s eyes snap open. Eddie is watching him with a smirk with his head propped on one hand, hair disheveled and brown eyes mischievous. Richie’s breath catches at the sight, his stomach twisting.

He gives a weak, game smile. “You said the magic words, Eds,” he breathes.

_Fuck, _he’s in trouble.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello hello yes i am back for a shortish chapter. i needed to rip off the bandaid.
> 
> i know it's been a while since the last update, and it could be a while before the next one, too. honestly (**warning: author feelings dump ahead**) this fic has been giving me a lot of dread and anxiety, and i don't feel like i'm writing it for myself much anymore. i don't mind that so much when i'm writing something short, but i don't feel like the end is in sight on this one yet, and it's kind of overwhelming sometimes. i still plan to finish it but updates may be sporadic, and the more outside pressure i feel to finish the longer that will probably take. i even had to write this chapter in secret without telling anyone, just so it would feel like it was for me again, at least a little. and that did help! i'm hoping i can hang onto that.
> 
> anyway, thank you to everyone who's still reading it! i'm glad i could continue, and there are definitely parts i'm still looking forward to getting to. they just feel far away right now. 
> 
> thanks as always to [@jajs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jajs/pseuds/jajs) for the beta read!
> 
> i’m [@tempestbreak_](https://twitter.com/tempestbreak_) on twitter.
> 
> arabic glossary of new terms:  
_’addeish_: how much [colloquial]  
_mumtaz_: excellent


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